Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Now, you're here to talk about something else today.
Chapter 2: What did Rocco Stallard discover on Camp Beach?
A young lad called Rocco Stallard, what a fantastic name, Rocco Stallard, from O'Hacastle National School, discovered a giant mermaid's purse on Camp Beach. The rare egg case capsule measured over 16 centimetres long and over 30 centimetres long when you include its horns. Horns! Ken, now you're here to tell us why this is so important and why it's so rare.
Yeah, well, the great thing is that when you look at Tralee Bay and you look at the variety of what we call elasmobranchs, these are fish that don't have bones, sharks, rays and all of those other creatures that are just dependent on cartilage. Tralee Bay, from an international point of view, is a really, really important area.
It has very important sharks and rays and has just recently been designated by what's called the IUCN as a special area of conservation for these sharks and these rays. And this particular white skate, it lays its eggs in the form of what we call mermaid's purses.
And the skates very often, at the end of these mermaid's purses, if you could imagine the mask that Batman had with the little ears sticking up and they were protruding. And they actually loop these little hooks, if you like, onto some of the rocks and so on. They actually anchor in these mermaid purses. Others leave them loose and let the wave take them.
But in this particular case, this was a very rare skate. And to find one of these mermaid's purses was really very special. It gave us great encouragement to see that these creatures were actually reproducing. And interestingly, just a few weeks ago, the Irish Times, Ella McSweeney actually reported that a young chap had found the mermaid's purse of what we call flapper skate.
And flapper skate hadn't been on the east coast of Ireland for a long, long time. So we're now in a situation where we're beginning to see that these creatures are benefiting, I think, from some of the conservation measures that have been taken. But the variety of different creatures that are in Tralee Bay in terms of these rays and these skates is amazing.
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Chapter 3: Why is the White Skate considered rare and important?
So you have these angel shark, which really are, you know, they're another flatfish, if you like. They're a monkfish. In addition to that then as well, you have undulate rays, which are the most beautiful creatures with beautifully variegated wings as they move along the bed of the seafloor. And these other beautiful creatures called taupe as well. So lots of these creatures.
Kevin Flannery has been on before, I know, talking about them very eloquently. But certainly to find one of these very rare creatures, or at least the mermaid's purse, indicating that one of these very rare creatures has spawned, I think is fantastic.
And what was even more fantastic, if you like, is that the young fella in sixth class realised that this was an important thing. He didn't use it as a football and kick it up and down the beach. They were actually out there doing a healthy ocean school project, which had been held and organised by the Marine Institute in the first instance.
So they were out on a special and they were looking for all sorts of different things. And this was found and brought back and known to be something that was important enough to show to the people who were organising this. I presume they find all sorts of things. If you're a sixth class student, you might necessarily know what's important and what isn't.
So to have people out walking the beaches, picking up everything and being kind to them if they just pick up a stone or something. But on the other hand, you get gems like this. And it's a wonderful thing to have kids out doing this. He must have been delighted to get all that feedback.
Oh, absolutely thrilled. And my friend, Cushla Drumgoole-Reagan, who actually organises the Explorers programme for the Marine Institute, the work they have done over the last 10 or 15 years is utterly extraordinary. Nice and quietly, groups and groups and groups of kids going out there and being really, really excited to see what they find.
And certainly just, as you were saying, I remember being with Cushla on one occasion when we were doing an adult beach walk in County Louth. And we found some of the remains of some of the porpoises that would have been feeding offshore. And we'd been looking at a live porpoise just before that.
And she was able to identify then the parts that were left as part of one of those porpoises that had died naturally. And making that connection is just fantastic for the kids. And getting people to actually start looking and picking up on these rare finds is really important because the way things are changing. And it gives us a great indication as to what's happening.
It really shows the power of citizen science, doesn't it? That people out there, anybody can make a contribution to conservation, to science and to our understanding of the natural world. I mean, that was really about the Greenland shark too, with people out for a walk on the beach. It wasn't scientists going by, it was ordinary citizens.
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Chapter 4: How do mermaid's purses relate to the reproduction of skates?
So finding these kind of signs, it tells us a lot about their population and it's one of the best ways to keep track of these things. And scientists alone couldn't do this without the help of the general public, just couldn't cover that amount of territory. I'm inclined to think of the mermaid's purse as a kind of egg equivalent. Eggs in birds in the shells and all that sort of thing.
But they have food with them to last them through the incubation period. In a mermaid's purse, it might be one or it might be up to seven embryos sort of thing. Now, they internally fertilize. The male has claspers. He fertilizes the female. Now, she has these things. Now, she develops this technology, this wonderful rubbery thing. They might be months in this purse before they come out.
What feeds them when they're in them?
I don't know in any detail, I stand to be corrected on this, but I would assume that is exactly the same as we see in some of the fish, where in reality what you have is inside that embryo will be a system whereby it actually develops the actual food resources that it requires. That makes most sense to me. And I imagine, I assume, that inside those mermaids' purses, as the development happens...
There is the actual facility and indeed the units that will actually feed those creatures. But the interesting thing about the sharks and the rays is the fact that they have so many different ways of actually reproducing. So most of the bigger sharks reproduce young. live young.
And I think we've all probably seen photographs of this lovely underwater shots of the baby sharks coming out and immediately starting to feed. But then they have a lovely intermediate stage. So laying them is called viviparous. And then you have ovoviviparous. And ovoviviparous, basically the egg actually stays inside the female and then it hatches inside the female.
And it seems as if the young are coming out of the female. But in fact, they're coming out of the little mini mermaids parts of it, if you like, inside. And then there's the oviparous, and they're the ones that actually laid the ova and laid the mermaid's purses. So all of these different creatures have different ways of doing this.
And the interesting thing is that you think sometimes that you have to go to Kerry, you have to go to Galway to find these things. In fact, the east coast of Ireland is replete in terms of these different sorts of rays and sharks that we have. We've loads and loads of what we call lesser spotted dogfish. which are very often a nuisance for fishermen because there's so many of them.
And they are little, beautiful little mini sharks. Then you have these other creatures as well, these other larger dogfish. There's one in particular called the smooth hound, which I think is one of the most elegant creatures in the sea. And it appears along the coast to Wexford. And then we have these beautiful, huge, big taupe and greystones.
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Chapter 5: What significance does the discovery of mermaid's purses have for conservation?
I want to run down and immediately put my bathing costume on now, Ken, and run down.