WATCH: Two dolphins put on spectacular somersault show mere metres from shore as delighted beachgoers scream with amazement

Published: 16:15, 18 August 2026 | Updated: 16:19, 18 August 2026 MORE regulation is needed to protect dolphins and other marine life from ‘cowboys’ and influencers, renowned underwater photographer Ken O’Sullivan has said. It comes as dolphin pods are spotted closer to Irish shores with increasing regularity thanks to human activity, sometimes getting stranded and dying – as happened in Co. Kerry this week. Common dolphins have been spotted coming closer to Irish shores in recent years, particularly along the Atlantic coast. Images captured by the Irish Mail on Sunday last week show a pod of dolphins leaping from the water just metres from the shore near Cleggan, Co. Galway. Images captured by the Irish Mail on Sunday last week show a pod of dolphins leaping from the water just metres from the shore near Cleggan, Co. Galway. Images captured by the Irish Mail on Sunday last week show a pod of dolphins leaping from the water just metres from the shore near Cleggan, Co. Galway. Images captured by the Irish Mail on Sunday last week show a pod of dolphins leaping from the water just metres from the shore near Cleggan, Co. Galway. Images captured by the Irish Mail on Sunday last week show a pod of dolphins leaping from the water just metres from the shore near Cleggan, Co. Galway. Kevin Garvin from the Achill Experience Aquarium in Co. Mayo said they what looks like playful frolicking can have a more practical motive. He told the MoS: ‘It’s usually for hunting, so they will chase the shoals of mackerel and cod and pollock and all those other types of species closer to the shoreline. When you see them jumping out of the water, sometimes they’re doing that to stun the fish. ‘They’re also herding them closer to the shore. So sometimes dolphins will actually try to beach the fish, or try to get them on shallower ground so they can get at them a bit better.’ Mr Garvin said he is seeing more of this activity closer to shore in recent years. This is partly due to overfishing of mackerel further out, and partly due to rising sea temperatures. Marine cameraman and documentary maker Ken O’Sullivan said ecotourism provides a ‘huge opportunity’ for coastal communities, with EU fishing quotas reduced significantly this year. Marine cameraman and documentary maker Ken O’Sullivan said ecotourism provides a ‘huge opportunity’ for coastal communities But he warned the sector ‘must be regulated in some way, because there’s a lot of cowboys out there’. He told the MoS: ‘Like the Blasket Islands [off Co Kerry], which is a beautiful place, it was a special area of conservation for harbour porpoises. There’s eight, nine, ten, RIBs [rigid inflatable boats] flying in, flying out, and the locals are telling you they haven’t seen porpoises there for a couple of years.’ Ecotourism operators do not need a licence to operate, and work off of guidelines from the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS). ‘There certainly is almost no monitoring and no policing,’ Mr O’Sullivan claimed. And he said social media influencers capturing drone footage are disrupting habitats too – sometimes illegally. ‘It’s a real mess,’ the wildlife filmmaker said. ‘They are meant to have permits from the NPWS. Mine took five months to get this year, so I didn’t go filming basking sharks. And then there’s loads of people with 100,000 followers, [posting] “Here I am with the basking sharks – it’s amazing,” and they’re way too close to the animals. ‘If you get some 20-year-old guy who doesn’t know anything about nature, but he can fly a drone, he’s, “Woohoo! I get on top of a basking shark, make a post, I get 1,000 likes.” It’s a bit of a wild west at the moment.’ Mr O’Sullivan continued that basking sharks are particularly threatened, ‘but also dolphins, because they’ll come right up to your boat – so boats just being too close to them and harassing them.’ Kevin Flannery, a marine biologist at the Dingle Aquarium, told the MoS: ‘Now we have sardines and we have anchovies in Ireland. There were actually sardines caught this week out of Castletownbere in West Cork by people angling. With the increased temperature, the anchovies are back up here, which were gone for millennia. But now all of a sudden these species are back. So obviously the foraging dolphins and the schools of dolphins will be going inshore chasing them.’ MARINE documentarian Ken O’Sullivan says reports describing ‘a shark attack’ off the coast of Waterford this week were a ‘complete misrepresentation of what happened’. Fishing enthusiast Sebastian Achim was bitten by a blue shark while angling for the species south of Ardmore. O’Sullivan told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘[Recreational fishers] put out chub – they mince up mackerel – and they put it in the water. They catch a shark. The animal fights for its life for half an hour. They haul it in with their full body weight, to get a picture usually. And while the shark was on board, they’re taking pictures and they’re pulling the hook out of its mouth, and the animal reacted and snapped at what was near it. ‘And then all of the headlines are “Shark attack off Waterford”. It’s a bit of a misrepresentation, isn’t it?’ The underwater photographer said he has ‘spent my life campaigning for sharks’. ‘Humans are killing 270 million sharks every year, and there’s between six and eight people killed by sharks,’ he noted. Mr Achim himself appeared to agree with O’Sullivan’s analysis when he told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland this week: ‘I cannot say if it was a deliberate attack or it was not a deliberate attack, but the fish is in the right anyway. We took it out of the water and the fish was in his survival instinct.’ Mr Flannery said native dolphin species are visible all year round, but more will be seen at this time of year as they build up fat reserves for winter. While their apparently playful displays delight beachgoers from up close, stranding events are happening more often. Just this week, four adult dolphins and five calves died after becoming stranded on Trá na Feothanaí in west Kerry, before a rescue effort got eight more back out to sea. Mr Flannery helped lead the rescue effort. He said: ‘The thing I’ve found from the years of rescuing dolphins is, the mother will stay with the baby if the baby gets trapped. They’re very social animals, and they will not leave it. That’s why we have so many mortalities. ‘Obviously their rib cages haven’t evolved like ours, so when they’re lying on the weight of themselves it puts pressure on their liver and their kidney and their other organs: ‘They’ll only last a couple of hours if you don’t get them out’. Asked about regulation of ecotourism, Mr Flannery said: ‘All these vessels are regulated. Some people would say there should be a speed limit. Some people say there should be less boats. But National Parks and Wildlife are very well aware of it, and they have their own boats here monitoring it.’ In response to queries, the NPWS said it has ‘no role in the licencing of commercial marine ecotourism activity’. A spokeswoman noted Minister of State for Nature, Heritage and Biodiversity, Christopher O’Sullivan launched a new Code of Conduct for responsible marine wildlife watching earlier this year, in collaboration with marine tour operators in the southwest of Ireland. She said the code ‘includes recommended speeds, distance and time limits when observing particular species from boat tours, describes the behaviours of species when they are experiencing disturbance, and highlights times when they may be especially vulnerable. The Code is currently being piloted by tour operators in the Cork and Kerry region.’ ■ To report a stranded dolphin, whale or porpoise, call the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group hotline on (097) 28118