Episode 3 Monty Halls' Great Irish Escape

'This is the coast of Connemara in the west of Ireland.

'I'm here to study the huge sea creatures that swim in these waters.'

It's a phenomenal encounter, it really is.

That was moderately close.

'And this glorious coastline is my office.'

My God! Look at that.

Ridiculously beautiful.

'And summer's arrived, with age-old traditions carrying on as strong as ever.'

The regattas, the festivals, the culture.

'This is the good life.'

It's great fun. Did I mention it was great fun?

Woo-hoo-hoo!

Fantastic!

'This week, the appliance of science

'in my efforts to learn as much as I can about the dolphins,

'whales and basking sharks swimming off the Connemara coast.'

It's still very exciting, undeniably very exciting.

'The scariest harbour entrance I've ever seen...'

Good man, Monty.

'..and a magical encounter with inquisitive seals.'

It's midsummer's day, it's 21st June,

it's the summer solstice

and unusually, it actually feels like summer.

It's a beautiful, beautiful day, lovely blue skies, shimmering seas

and the land is just a riot of life

at the moment, everything's completely lost its mind,

the flowers, the birds, the trees, the lambs,

everything's just gone nuts.

But the real action, for me, is taking place in there.

So the pressure's on.

I've started lots of projects here. I'm now doing the photographic ID.

I've got to try and find some big animals, find some big whales,

maybe orcas, passing through this body of water.

I've got to collate information about the marine life here

and try and communicate that to people to get them all excited

about what exists right off their shores, here in Connemara.

A beautiful day, it's midsummer and I'm off to Mayo.

Now Mayo's the kind of bit that sticks out,

top left-hand corner of Ireland.

So it's sort of a turning point for big animals, you know?

A lot that come round the top of Ireland curve round the top of Mayo.

And I'm going to be out with Simon on a boat,

we're going to be towing a hydrophone,

which is a great way of detecting cetaceans, whales and dolphins.

'Simon Berrow runs the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group. I'm working for them as a volunteer.

'There are plans to build an experimental wave energy station

'in the bay and the IWDG has been employed to see

'how it might affect the local marine life.'

'First thing to do is to establish how many whales

'and dolphins there are in the area.'

Well, the sun just bursting through the cloud,

so every indication is that this is all going to burn off.

We've got a reasonably calm day, so the scene is set

to see something and do some good work today, I think.

So the idea is we're going off round the headland

and the idea is to cover a set area of ocean,

towing the hydrophone, just get an idea of what's out there.

The hydrophone is a listening device that picks up the clicking noises

dolphins and whales use to communicate with each other.

It's part of Ireland's sort of ocean energy programme.

We've got huge resources, but how do we tap into it?

So what we're looking at is the impact on the environment,

on the birds, on the benthos on the seabed and obviously,

from our point of view, the whales, dolphins and seals.

It's important to know what species occur

and look at the frequency band that they communicate in.

If it's baleen whales, like minke whales, it'll be low frequency,

-porpoises, high frequency, dolphins mid frequency.

-Right.

We're deploying the hydrophone.

What's the sort of range of it, Simon?

Depends. For porpoises, a few hundred metres.

Few hundred metres, right.

-With whistles, kilometres.

-Right.

-Dolphin clicks, maybe 500, 1,000 metres.

-Oh, wow.

Actually what Simon and Joanna are doing here is,

the hydrophone's deployed

and you're looking at a sort of multi-faceted approach

because that's basically the ears, listening to the water around us as we do the transect.

But the most important thing is, in this case, is the Mark 1 eyeball.

It's having a couple of people up the top permanently scanning the surrounding water with binoculars,

so you're listening through the whole transect

and you're recording whatever you hear but also you're looking as well.

Amazingly, really. I can actually see something,

but it might be a buoy or a seal's head.

It's kind of at about two o'clock.

-It's a bird, I'd say, yeah.

-Oh, is it a bird?

-A bird floating, yeah.

-Oh.

Ian here's been listening to the hydrophone for six hours.

And are you hearing anything, picking up anything?

At about one o'clock, I thought I heard a few clicks,

so I just logged it in the computer that it was possible clicks

and it gives the guys back at the lab a heads-up

when they're looking at the file to see what time they can look at it.

-Do you mind if I have a little listen?

-Not at all.

I'll put these on, then it'll just be music.

-Could have been sitting there for hours.

-Watching telly.

-That's right.

-No luck?

-No.

There you are. I won't deprive you of the pleasure for too long.

You can hear the sort of slight cavitation, I think, can't you?

It's not unlike a loud... the sound you get when you put a shell up to your ear.

-Yeah.

-Not unlike a very loud version of that.

-Yeah, yeah.

'After an entire day at sea, we're not sure we've detected anything.'

I'm sure it wasn't this long when it went out.

'But the data will be analysed back at base, just to make sure.'

Oh-ho! At the eleventh hour,

just as we're coming in,

you know, disconsolate and broken, having been out here for 12 hours,

there's a group of dolphins here, bottlenose dolphins

-and they're hunting, they're driving fish inshore.

-Woo-hoo!

Whoa!

Woo-hoo!

Woo-hoo!

These are the kind of in-shore dolphins

that are seen around here quite a lot.

-So they'll work this whole bit of coastline?

-Yeah.

I'd say we'll match these to Connemara, to Antrim, Donegal.

So all these photos you're taking are going to be matched up to your database.

-Just like the ones you took off Roundstone.

-Yeah.

Oh-ho, fantastic.

For the guys on the boat, of course, you know this is when

the works starts, the moment the animals appear

and you get carried away and get all emotional about it, but it's really important

to photo-ID them, try and find out where they're from,

build up this database of information along the coast of Ireland.

But it's still very exciting, it's undeniably very exciting.

-Great, that really rounds off the end of the day, doesn't it?

-Doesn't it just?

Bottlenose dolphins by sunset.

The dolphins saved the day but Simon's not had much luck

with another important part of the project.

Six months ago, he put out an underwater listening device called an acoustic pod.

It's worth 4,000 euros, and it's gone missing.

I have a plan, a cunning plan

that we'll play to the market economy and I was thinking

let's set a bounty on the pod

because it's worth lot of money to us.

-I'd do it for a pint of beer and a pickled egg.

-You're so cheap.

-I am very, very cheap.

It's not just the price of the actual pod, it's the data we can't get back.

It's irreplaceable. That's been there for six months now,

that's half the year's data we could lose.

-For us it's so valuable, I think a bounty is the only way.

-Yeah.

Just got in from County Mayo.

It's quarter to one in the morning

and we were up at six this morning getting ready for the boat.

So they're long days, these, but I think it's almost

you've got to put the hours in on the road and on the sea

and it was a good day, we saw some dolphins.

And it all adds to this body of work that's gathering information

on these animals up and down the coast.

But it really is up and down the coast.

It's just relentless, you know? I'm cream-crackered. Again.

Always seem to be cream-crackered nowadays,

so I'm going to crawl into bed.

I'm having a little do on Saturday night and it's the first gathering

I'm having since I've been here. There's a number of people

who've helped me out, who've been nice to learn things from

about the local environment and customs

and all that sort of stuff, so I'm going to have a barbecue.

But I haven't got a barbecue or anything to put on it at the moment,

so I'm going fishing, pull my pots up and hopefully get some stuff,

and build a barbecue right here.

Never built one before, but how difficult can it be?

Surely only a fool could mess up a barbecue building thing.

There we are, done.

I love the whole barbecuing process.

You know, the fact that you light the barbecue

at three in the afternoon and you're ready to eat by about midnight. I like that.

I actually think this is going to work.

Most uncharacteristic for anything I ever build.

I actually think this will be a triumph.

Perfect. Perfect!

Now I've got to catch some fish.

It's an interesting thing, this going out to get the fish,

because the more time you spend out there,

the more likely you are to see stuff.

So it's lovely to get everyone round

and hopefully catch some pollock but it all means time on the water,

and that's the key to these things, maximising my time out there,

actually looking for the dolphins and sort of recording their movements.

Right, I'm going to stick the anchor down

and do a bit of fishing.

Feel like a kid, all excited.

REEL SPINS

Great sound that, isn't it?

And now...we wait.

Bear in mind that in slightly over 24 hours,

I've got about ten people to feed.

Patience is a virtue and all that.

Right, Plan B is I'm just going to drift along this headland here

and have these guys in the water kind of drifting behind the boat.

You watch, it's a banker. 100% that'll result in fish.

Plan C is I'm moving a little further off the point,

I'm going to go into slightly deeper water

because that's where the big fellas hang out.

Right, this is Plan D, put some feathers on

and I'll just trail them behind the boat.

There's a specific way up you're supposed to have feathers

and I think it's like that.

Oh, hello!

I'm in.

Ho-ho! That's almost half a fish pie.

Here we go chap, sorry.

The big thing that fish do, bony fish do, as opposed to sharks

and rays - there's about 400 species of sharks and rays

and there's thousands and thousands of species of bony fish,

because they've cracked a number of very clever things, bony fish.

The first one is they have rayed fins, you can see the fins there,

they've got like little sort of supports running through them

and that means they can do this with their fins, they're not rigid,

so they can swim backwards, they're very, very manoeuvrable.

The other thing they've got is this huge mouth. You see the way that opens.

It's due to something called the three-bar linkage system

and that, essentially, is a wonderful bit of engineering

that means the mouth can open

much, much wider than the actual jaw size appears

and when that happens, water rushes in

and just about all bony fish use that as a feeding technique.

They gulp in water,

the food rushes in, and they close it - the three-bar linkage system.

Look at the size of that mouth

and that's a really, really great design feature.

So there we are, that's a bony fish, it's a pollock

and it's about half of my fish pie.

There.

We're done. I'm sorted for tomorrow night.

I'm going to have a pollock-based fish pie.

I'll buy some scallops off the fishermen.

'I'm keeping my eyes peeled for dolphins

'because my big challenge over the summer is to discover

'if the animals I often see in the bay live here all year round.

'If they do, this whole area could get special protection status.

'I'm also going to be listening for them.

'Simon's promised to give me an acoustic pod,

'like the one he's just lost.'

That's Errisbeg mountain there

and there's Roundstone in the background.

It looks like it's a beautiful day, but it's choppy

and it's going to get up to 30 knots or so later on this afternoon.

Now this is a great way to explain

why I need the acoustic pods out here.

The waves make it impossible to see a dolphin fin at any distance,

which is really frustrating, but if I can't see them,

I can hear them with an acoustic pod.

And they're the constant scientists,

sitting on the sea floor listening out for whales and dolphins

and they're going to gather the information for me

to tell me whether this pod of dolphins here is a resident pod.

But photo-ID is still the most immediate priority,

Simon's been in touch to say that the pictures

we took on the hydrophone survey identified 11 individuals

and two of them could be linked to the group in my bay,

which all helps to build a picture of how they move

up and down the coast.

Come on then. Come on.

It's another beautiful day on the west coast of Ireland

but it's a very, very big day

because we're putting the acoustic pods out. Simon's going to be down in five minutes,

so we're going to head out in the RIB,

head into the gloom and the maelstrom

and stick one of the pods over the side.

-Good morning, skipper.

-Simon, how are you?

-What have you done with the weather?

-I know, it's honking - that was summer.

-It's always sunny in West Bay.

-Yeah.

You got to bear in mind that this pod's going to be subjected

to two months of big swells and Atlantic storms and whatever,

so you need something fairly substantial to hold it down,

so Simon gets these from the local railway, legally, I hasten to add,

he doesn't go out in the dead of night and jemmy them off the track.

If you're travelling by train anywhere near Kilrush, just hang on to your hat.

Come on.

'Simon's son, Ronan, is coming with us for the ride.'

So we've very few from Achill, I mean Anthony's had a few

up in Ballymoney, but not many,

nothing like... It's really Donegal which is mad.

-Where did you see them last night?

-I saw them once in there...

-Oh, that close...

..and the other time was sort of straight off here.

We're at 20 metres now.

As long as the fishermen don't mind, we're sticking here, but it's your call.

We've got 50 feet here,

sort of 15 metres or so and this is slightly in the lee of the island.

-Yeah, that's right. Excellent.

-Great.

So this piece of delicate electronics

we're about to hoy into the ocean, how much is it worth?

They're about four grand now, 4,000, yeah. Price is going up.

If I lose it you can have my RIB, how about that?

Oh, I like the sound of that. THEY LAUGH

Sawing through the line.

We did lose a lot in the early days - this is the fourth generation.

But we're getting better and a lot of people criticise,

"Oh, you've lost that," but we're working in a really harsh environment

and most people who use this kit use it for porpoises.

Porpoises are coastal, you know North Sea, Baltic,

it's not the west of Ireland, so we kind of used to feel quite bad

when we lost gear and damaged gear and now we don't.

We just say, "Look, you know, we're working in harsh environments."

If somehow we proved it had a level of being a kind of resident pod,

that's very significant, isn't it?

Yeah. We're trying to protect their habitat,

so if we can show that this is a site they use regularly,

it's the same animals that come back, it has a level of importance.

There's calves present, for example,

it is important, therefore, it should be put forward as a site

that should be considered for protection.

-Hence the pod we're putting out today.

-Well, you know yourself

the weather isn't always great, you can't always get out,

so acoustics can monitor 24/7 in all sea conditions.

It's like me sitting out here for two months, monitoring everything that comes past.

I think they're possibly more reliable than you.

Yeah, yeah, I would say.

My electronics are profoundly flawed, so...

OK, no loops round ankles or anything?

You can put yours in the water now if you like...

and then that's drifting away. OK.

This is it.

We'll be back in a couple of months to see what data it's picked up

of the movement of the dolphins on the coastline, so that's going to be a big day, that.

It's the old Captain Ahab bit, isn't it? Loop round the ankle.

Too much rope out, he disappears. Look at that, perfect length of rope.

-Right, you're off.

-Yes, I think so, there we go.

A buoy with Monty Halls written on it.

It's a beautiful June evening and I've got a dozen local people

coming round and Simon as well, just to have a bit of food,

to eat the pollock that I caught the other day.

I've made a truly catastrophic fish pie.

I'm not quite sure at what point a pie becomes a soup

but I think I've crossed that barrier, whatever it is.

But sometimes I think, you know, you've got a great evening,

you've got good company, a few glasses of wine

and fresh local food and you can't do much better than that.

You see, I'm not entirely sure pies should do that.

My guests are the people who've been helping me out since I arrived.

There's the Berrow clan.

'As well as Simon and his family

'and the great guru of the sea, Martin, there's Bridie, my landlady.'

Oh, nice.

'Lyn, who looks after Reuben when I'm out on my adventures,

'and some of my neighbours.'

-Well, let me offer you a drink first.

-Yes.

Is it all right? You might have to give me a quick demo.

Back of the hands, the back of the hands like, if you turn this,

hold my hands like this.

Oh, like that.

That's it. That's it.

Lyn is the Ringo Starr of bodhran players.

Very loose. That was fine!

One of the things I've realised over here is

when you get a group of people from Roundstone around and Connemara around,

you don't have to try to entertain them.

You don't have to make polite chitchat and all that. Everyone just has a natter

and gets stuck in and before you know it,

someone's having a little dance or singing a song or whatever.

You know, really nice.

Really chatty, easy-going,

lovely, friendly people who've all got a bit of a story to tell

and are happy to tell it.

So it's great, and everyone liked my fish pie as well.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Very good.

I'm coming to a fairly key period in the work I'm doing here

and I need extra bodies to help me out.

So I've got a bunch of volunteers to come over.

'They're from Plymouth University, where I did my degree,

'and they're young marine biologists full of vim and vigour.'

I've arranged to meet them in a local dive centre, which I'm turning down towards.

Oh, my God, look at that!

This is ridiculous, ridiculously beautiful.

I'm really going to work them hard over the next few weeks.

This ain't no holiday for them.

It's going to be a combination of working dives for the IWDG,

filming and photography dives

and then get them out on the water and patrolling.

I'm finding it so difficult all on me own.

Rubes, you've perked up a bit.

-Hello. Hello, I'm Monty.

-Claire.

Hello, Catherine.

Hello, Jess, how are you? Not a bad old day.

-Really good day.

-It's like this every day in Ireland.

-That's what they've been saying to us.

-Yeah, yeah.

But there's no time to stand around chatting about the weather.

I've already organised our first mission,

to retrieve Simon's lost acoustic pod.

I've got the other divers in the van behind me.

The information on it is so important to the IWDG and the work they're doing,

so I'm driving to County Mayo and I'm not coming back until I've got that pod tucked under my right arm.

Morning, Michael, how are you?

'We're joining up with Michael and skipper Anthony from the hydrophone research trip.'

-Welcome back.

-Yeah, yeah, I just couldn't stay away.

Catherine, this is Anthony, Michael and Tim.

-I see why you didn't bring our team, you brought this team instead.

-That's right, yeah.

Right, here's the plan.

What's happening right now is we're just moving up and over the location of the beacon.

The reason is we're going to drop the anchor and then drift back over the top of it and us divers

will go down the anchor and then work our way back, sweep our way back,

so we should sweep back towards it.

I have high hopes for the rope search.

-Yeah, me too, me too.

-Which has immediately put the kiss of death on the rope search.

OK, I'll head down first.

To do a proper methodical search, I hang on to the anchor chain

as the rest of the team use the rope to swim in a circular search pattern.

-Do we have a pod, Monty?

-Now that's a very good question.

No idea. Not over there. I can say that with some confidence.

So basically no pod, no?

-No, we did the full loop.

-Right.

-Right the way round.

Yeah, we just couldn't find it. It's a real mystery, I mean, what do you think?

-Do you think it might have been dragged?

-Definitely been dragged.

-Do you think?

Definitely there were some pretty hard storms here like but, you know,

since the last deployment it wasn't

that bad like but you just don't know.

-You put things like this in the wild ocean.

-Yeah, very true.

That's really disappointing, you know, but there we go, we crack on.

There's a good chance that pod will wash up anyway because Simon

says there's a lot of goodwill towards the work the IWDG are doing here

and when they wash up on the beaches, generally people send them back.

So it's out there somewhere, gathering data, so, yeah...

the truth is out there.

Just got in again from trying to recover the pod in County Mayo.

It's ten to twelve. Didn't get it back so bit of a downer, really.

You know...

I think the guys from the IWDG,

diving's kind of my thing and I turn up with all my team and all that

and there was a palpable sense of disappointment on the boat when we didn't actually recover them

and I feel I've sort of let them down a little bit,

which is a bit grim really.

I had high hopes this morning when I set out, but there we go, these things happen

and we tried, you know, we really, really gave it a good go

and tomorrow's another day and all that.

So there we are, one of those things, really.

It's yet another beautiful day, beautiful June day

and when I visited the Arans last time, I promised myself I'd return,

so I'm going back and I'm going back to see if I can find baskers off those big cliffs

off Inis Mor, to see if I can find whales, minke whales, dolphins

but also because there's a big regatta going on, a big festival,

and it's a great excuse to not only patrol the cliffs

but also see a little slice of Irish culture and heritage.

It's about a ten-mile trip, two hours basically - this is a gigantic patrol,

hoping to see whales, dolphins and basking sharks en route.

This is the main harbour at Inis Mor and, of course, this is the very centre of the regatta

and where all the currach racing and everything will take place.

Kind of a big deal here, you know, their regatta, it's a big event, a big celebration of midsummer.

These are the currachs, these are the racing currachs

and the first race is the one-man racing currach, which I am going to enter

and sneakily I think I'll do quite well.

I've got this completely unfounded sense of confidence, I've no idea where it's come from.

-I'm entered in the singles.

-Yeah, good man.

Do you row?

I've done a bit of rowing.

It might be me next.

I've done a little rowing training on the static rowers and things,

and a little bit of rowing, but they look really skittish, they look like they move around a lot.

-Really moves a lot, yeah.

-Yeah.

-Monty.

-Yes.

-Three.

-Three, excellent. I like the look of three.

The next time you see this currach, it'll be being winched up under a coastguard helicopter,

having been blown about 40 miles out to sea.

You don't want to get in them fellas' ways.

No, could get nasty.

Off with you now.

Just round the same buoy as the other lads?

-And back again.

-Yeah. If you can give the biggest shove you've ever given a man in a currach.

-Right.

KLAXON

Come on!

'Yes, that is me coming last.' Did I win?

It was great but... so much technique in it, you know.

When you get tired and the moment you give it welly, you really give it stacks,

straight away the boat goes like that, so you have to try and correct and correct.

What did you think, Tony?

-Uh?

-What did you think?

-Bit more training and you'll go places.

-It's funny, the moment you really try

and put a bit of power on, it just sort of slews, unless you really know what you're doing.

Yeah.

Winning the currach race, it's quite a big deal.

It is, yes, as you've seen, when you were out there,

there's nothing easy about it and it does take a lot of effort

and it's a test of stamina as well as everything else, like skill and stamina and yeah, to win that,

that's an achievement. For anyone who goes out in it, it's an achievement.

-It kind of keeps the tradition alive.

-It keeps you in touch with your history, basically.

It's such a key part of Ireland's history.

At one stage that was their mode of transport, you know.

Yeah, and the way of getting your bread and butter, wasn't it, when you're going fishing?

Well done!

All the training paid off.

Well done. Congratulations. All that secret training.

And why stop at one humiliation?

This is the pint of Guinness on a tray race,

and these are the gentlemen I'm racing against,

who assure me that when you get round the corner from beyond the crowd,

so no-one can see you, it's all elbows and knees and...

WHISTLE

Oh, no, he's gone on the inside.

It's all about spillage.

Look at this, Tony.

-I think I came last.

-No, no, it was fourth. You was only fourth in under three minutes.

-Right.

-The rest was disqualified.

-Were they?

-You were fourth, or third.

-I was fourth.

It's been great, it's been a really, really good day.

I've enjoyed myself even though I've been utterly spanked in everything I've entered.

And of course we've got the famous Irish craic this evening with traditional music in all the bars.

Bit of a windy day.

We're going to go out just by Inishlacken island, catch some pollock, lift the lobster pots.

I don't know why they're called lobster pots by the way, I've never caught a lobster in one.

And today Rubes is coming with me.

What do you think, Rubes? Pretty windy, isn't it?

REUBEN BARKS

It's always emotional when Rubes is on the boat. What do you think, Rubes?

Barking at the waves is a new thing and I'm not quite sure why he does it.

And he is barking AT the waves.

We're not falling in, pal!

I do my best to catch a few fish while I'm here,

but so far it hasn't been going that brilliantly.

Just going to try and catch a couple of pollock if I can. I haven't got any bait for the creels.

A bit of a bleak old day.

That's the bottom,

or is it?

I think this is a massive fish.

That is a huge pollock.

How about that?

It's a beast.

That's a big pollock,

no doubt about that,

but they get to about a metre long.

This is such a successful animal on the reef, but that's a big fella, you know.

It's a whopper. I'm going to eat him.

He isn't going in the pots.

A man and a gigantic Alsatian...

out on a boat in the middle of nowhere.

Oh, a mackerel. Fantastic! The mackerel are here.

That's a real... harbinger of summer, that.

They're my first mackerel.

It's always a great sign, you know.

It means summer's here and reminds me of when I was a kid, used to go mackerel fishing with my dad

and they're the sweetest, nicest fish. I'll cook them up tonight

with the pollock. Go and get the lobster pots.

And there's one there, and there's one there.

Lobster, whoo!

How about that?

A lobster.

Three years I've been trying to catch a lobster in a pot.

It's all getting a bit emotional out here at the moment

and poor old Rubes doesn't know quite what to make of it all.

So I'm going to head back in, I'm leaving my other two creels in, I'll come and get them another day.

Quite frankly, a lobster, two mackerel and a massive pollock,

that's not a bad haul for half an hour.

This is Homarus gammarus - the lobster.

You can see one massive claw there -

that's its kind of fighting-and-crushing claw

and the other claw is more of a tool.

An interesting thing about these guys, the way they communicate,

the way they find a mate, is through their wee, through urine.

If a female likes the smell of a male's urine, it'll urinate

outside his hole, as it were,

outside his den, and he'll come out to investigate.

If he likes the smell of her urine

the two of them live happily in marital bliss afterwards,

in a relationship based on urine, which is quite interesting.

I shall dine royally tonight, on lobster and fresh mackerel,

which isn't too bad, is it?

Just cooking the lobster and I'm going to go and get one of my elephant garlics in a moment,

from the garden.

Rubes.

Mix it in with a bit of butter, a little potato salad that I've made

and then drizzle the garlic over the top of the lobster and then I'm going to stuff my face.

Now, as ever with my recipes,

I wouldn't particularly recommend giving this a go at home.

It's sort of experimental but I'm told that elephant garlic

is more of a kind of leeky, oniony affair.

I'll just sort of give that a bit of butter a certain piquant taste,

as we say in the business, and I'll get a few herbs

from the little herb garden at the back, sprinkle that in as well

and, again, with something like a lobster, you really don't need to

do too much, do you?

I've put a bit of lemon in it, as well, and a bit of potato salad and then just eat it.

It's not a bad evening. It's June so it's kind of warmish,

so I've decided I'm going to eat it outside

and because I'm a man of no style or class whatsoever

I haven't got any white wine,

I've only got red wine and it's from a box as well.

How naff's that?

But there we go.

Meal fit for a king, I think, and I'm eating it all on me own.

I'm just sitting here eating a lobster on my Jack Jones

and normally I think,

"Oh, it's beautiful food, lovely evening, be nice to have some company,

"some, you know, hint of romance in the air,"

but this evening I just think it's more for me, quite frankly.

Mmm.

So good.

One of the things I haven't got round to yet is doing talks for the locals

about what fantastic wildlife they've got on their doorstep.

So today, I'm making a start on the remotest inhabited island on the west coast.

This is Inishturk.

It's kind of a far-flung outpost of island life.

There's about 80 people live on the island and it's a very good place for me to visit, actually,

because the guys here, if anyone's going to be seeing basking sharks,

whales and dolphins, it's the fishermen who work from here, so I've got a day on the island.

The first stop, the island's only school with a grand total of seven pupils and one teacher.

The reason we know nothing about these animals,

have a guess how deep the...

'I got into marine biology as a kid and I want to inspire the next generation.'

Two and a half miles - that's how deep the ocean is.

Two and a half miles deep. So we don't know anything about it, it's deep and dark and mysterious.

But what you do is you go out there and you throw in a bit of bait,

as you can see, and you wait for the amazing senses that a shark has to actually close in on the bait.

So it swims up to the boat and then you just pull the bait in and the shark just follows

the bait in and you're trying to get it to come up and actually show you these amazing jaws.

There we go. Now these are the tags and the idea is that we go up to the sharks, as you can see here,

and with a pole, like a broomstick, and we just stick that in at the base of their fin.

They just don't feel it, they're like dinosaurs, these guys, they weigh five tons, they're massive.

So I'll go and stick that in the basking shark that you tell me's here

when the basking sharks turn up and then we get a lot more information about where they go,

what happens to them, where they are in the world's oceans and this,

where you live, is one of the few places on earth where

they're regularly seen, so you're really lucky, you've got giants off the shore. Fantastic thing.

-And the other thing as well that you can help me with is if you see any whales or any dolphins.

-Whoa!

You see a lot of them? Yeah? Fantastic.

'Amazing experience, that.'

It's interesting that the kids are so locked into the environment.

I asked questions about the sea and they knew straightaway

because the sea's in their blood, it really is, they're islanders. Brilliant.

Good stuff. Created seven more marine biologists, part of my mission.

I couldn't come all this way and not explore the islands properly.

John Brittain, head of the local RNLI, and historian Michael Gibbons

have agreed to show me the sights, starting with an extraordinary natural harbour.

But to get to it you've got to go through this narrow bottleneck, which coincidentally

is just as wide as a modern RIB apparently and we've got

a bit of swell taking us in there,

so I could stick like a big orange bung.

Both John and Michael have never done this in a RIB before and obviously neither have I, so...

Good man, Monty. Well done.

That was exhilarating.

-Look at this!

-This is a pirates' lair, like, it's just perfect.

It is. Perfect base to launch little forays out

and no-one will find you here, unless they know the coast.

If you come along the coast, you wouldn't know it was there.

What's really amazing about the site is,

very narrow little promontory fort and they built a wall right out, not conceding any ground at all.

And this was unequivocally a fortification, this was built for battle, it was built...

Well, the character of the Irish historically was riven by faction,

prone to internecine strife and family feuds, so you had a political system that's family-based.

Every 20 miles it's a new country and new political allegiances

and they were changing very dramatically over time.

Anyone raiding from the sea, you're going to take a small area but then if you

want to move up the coast you have to do it all again.

All over again, so it makes colonisation very difficult

"Oh, for crying out loud - another chieftain's daughter to marry off."

Much of Ireland was like that prior to the Middle Ages

but Gaelism has been in retreat since then and it's still surviving here.

-This is the last stronghold.

-Yeah, clinging on to the cultural abyss by its fingernails.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

The neighbouring island of Caher has been uninhabited for years,

but it's one of the earliest sites of Christianity in Ireland and still a place of pilgrimage.

We're walking along the ancient harbour here,

passing what would originally have been a little lot with its cross on,

often with white quartz pebbles just overlooking, cross-marking the landing harbour.

So, we're walking over sacred ground here?

Yeah, it was a holy island, essentially.

So what's really wonderful about it, unlike the more famous sites - the Skelligs and Inishmurray,

you haven't had the heavy hand of the restorer's eye

trying to figure out what it was like. This is as history has left it,

so it is a remarkable - dishevelled, in some ways - but really authentic early site.

So if you look, you just get a glimpse through what you're looking at here.

It's a seventh- or eighth-century hanging lamp from the early church

and you've the cursing stone next to it, which is this wonderful conglomerate rock.

But the difficulty with restoring a building like this is the less you do, the better.

Yeah. So that would have been a hanging oil?

Yes, it's a little rail around the edge but, as you can see, these are 50 cents.

This is from last year's pilgrimage. This is living proof, if you like, that this is part of

the Christian culture that's still clinging on here. In a turbulent world, people come to Caher

as part of an important part of their sort of spiritual cycle during the year. It's like an anchor point.

Every now and then as I travel up and down the coast of Ireland looking for

basking sharks and dolphins and whales, you come across a gem,

you come across something really special and that's this place.

This is the embodiment of a very special part of Irish culture

and there are certain places, I think, that have a real feel to them,

whether a very spiritual feel or a sacred feel and I can see why this place is what it is

in terms of a pilgrimage or whatever, you know.

I'm surrounded by artefacts that are 1,000 years old -

they're lying on the floor, they're propped up against walls, carved by someone

centuries and centuries ago and it's one of the most extraordinary places I think I've ever been.

It's very special.

When I arrived in Connemara, back in April,

Martin O'Malley introduced me to these waters with a visit to a seal colony near Slyne Head.

We're going back now for Martin's first-ever open-water dive

and to check out the seals, which are a killer whale's favourite food.

Always a nervous moment following Martin through these...

tiny honeycomb network of islands, got to concentrate 100%.

There's about three foot of water under his keel,

which means there's three foot of water under my keel.

I'm close to tears.

He does it on purpose, Martin.

And if my memory serves me correctly I think the seal colony's just up here.

You'll start to see them in a moment, hopefully.

There we are, there's a seal on the rocks,

-there's a head, there's another head.

-Whoo!

What you've got here is a mixture of greys and commons,

and the easy way to tell them apart is the greys are much bigger.

There's another way to tell them apart and that's the shape of the nostrils,

but I think if you're close enough to one of them to see the shape of their nostrils,

you might as well just ask them which species they are.

Now the big guys with the hooked noses are the grey seals.

I think most of these are greys, actually, but you'll see some smaller ones with the snub noses,

the common seals - or harbour seals, as they're known locally.

The common seals have their young kind of April, May time,

so there's hopefully going to be a few pups around.

The young ones are really curious and it's the young ones you want,

you can see the slightly smaller ones coming in to have a look at who we are and what we're doing.

Three, two, one, go.

The seals are very wary of us, so we change tactics and try snorkelling instead.

It's a tactic that pays off.

When you see these deep chasms, it's clear why the seals have chosen this area to live.

Killer whales - or orcas, to give them their proper name -

stalk them in open water,

but they're safe in these narrow gullies where the orcas can't follow.

Me and Martin were just hanging on the surface,

just kind of shooting the breeze, bobbing around, not doing anything

and we both looked down and sitting underneath us were these big eyes just peering up at us.

It was funny, wasn't it, Martin? Just couldn't figure out what we were, could it?

-She was sitting there, just staring up at us, wonderful.

-She's confused.

Yeah, completely, yeah, confused. Right, off we go.

Fantastic, fantastic experience. Brilliant to share it with Martin.

A great thing to be able to do, to introduce him to that environment,

introduce him to the animals he's been looking at for years.

He's grown up off Slyne Head and actually visiting this area.

To introduce him to the animals underwater is really special, you know.

So very special, a special day for me and,

I hope, a very special day for him, too.

Wildlife, like the seals, are a huge tourist draw and in Kilrush

on the Shannon estuary, dolphin-watching is big business.

I must admit I'm a bit worried about what would happen in Roundstone

if I ever did prove there was a resident pod of dolphins in the bay.

This is the Shannon Estuary and it's home to one of the only resident pods

of bottlenose dolphins in Ireland - probably THE only resident pod

and it's here that Simon Berrow and the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group ply their trade.

The whole thing of this quest to find if the Roundstone pod's a resident pod and all that -

and we'll see about that - should it be a resident pod?

You then end up with inevitable tourist pressure, don't you?

Tour boats and things coming in.

How much of an impact does that have? That's what you're monitoring today, isn't it?

Yeah, well, it's a double-edged sword because

if they're resident, it actually means that, from a tourism point of view,

it's much better, much easier to plan and to invest in decent boats

and advertise because you know they're there.

So residents, the dolphins are great to support the tourism,

but, as you said, it also means it's a very important place in terms of conservation

and there's a much bigger potential for disturbing the animals

-and ruining the very thing that matters, you know.

-Yeah.

Part of Simon's job is monitoring the boats that take tourists out to see the dolphins...

when there are any.

Is it fairly unusual to come out and not find them, would you say?

It is, I mean, it's something like 98% success rate,

-so 98% of trips both from Carrigaholt and Kilrush will find dolphins.

-Yeah.

And Geoff's boat is fantastic - it's got all the height so I mean...

Oh, dolphin! Just jumped, Geoff!

There we go, caught on camera.

It's great, this transformation in people on the boat when the dolphins appear, because suddenly

the worst 30 euro you've ever spent

to just bob around in a boat pointlessly in the middle of nowhere

becomes the best 30 euro you've ever spent in your life, as suddenly you see the animals

and the great thing is for a lot of the people here,

it's the first time they've ever seen a dolphin and it's something you never forget.

And the interesting thing is seeing everyone's reaction on the boat when

the dolphins appear, suddenly, morale was low and morale soared, and in a way that morale is money.

That excitement, they'll tell their mates and more people'll come.

It's much more exciting that way because they appreciate there are

wild dolphins and that we're privileged to see them which, of course, we are.

We've got a baby dolphin, I think, heading our way.

The good thing about seeing young ones is you can track their progress,

particularly if they're with an adult or with their mum

and the mum's got a clearly-marked fin, you can track them as a pair

and find out at what point the young one leaves, when the mother has a new one.

It's all really important stuff.

Obviously it shows that they're breeding here,

which is what I'm trying to prove off Roundstone, that they breed there as well.

I want to see young ones. To see some young ones would be fantastic.

It's been a good day, I've learnt a lot today.

Wa-hey!

-'Next time...'

-Pull, pull, pull, pull.

'..blue sharks arrive off the coast.'

I think the significant thing here is two more blue sharks tagged out there now.

'..the famous Connemara ponies are put through their paces...'

One of the horses came round this corner and ran straight into the sea.

'..and checking reports that a dolphin's been threatening swimmers.'

When she wants to turn it on, by jingo, she can turn it on!

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