But we have got whales and dolphins and other such things just off our coast.

Absolutely.

Well, apparently, David Attenborough said it's one of one of his regrets.

One of his few regrets was that they didn't cover more stuff within UK waters and UK mainland.

And of course, they're starting to do that now.

They've had two or three series because they're waking up to, you know what, we have amazing stuff here.

But of course, it's more difficult.

Like, I mean, given that what you do and you've done this for so many years and the incredible treasure of our seas, are you worried about what we're doing to our seas?

But we have got whales and dolphins and other such things just off our coast.

Absolutely.

Well, apparently, um, David Attenborough said it's one of, one of his regrets, one of his few regrets was that they didn't cover more stuff, um, within UK waters and UK mainland.

And of course, they're starting to do that now.

They've had two or three series because they're waking up to, you know what, we have, um, amazing stuff here.

But of course, it's more difficult.

You know, when, [laughs] when I became an underwater cameraman 20 or 25 years ago, you know, everybody I knew went to the tropics, whereas, you know, Ireland can be very hard work.

Like, I mean, given that what you do, and you've done this for so many years, like, and, and the incredible treasure of our seas, are you worried about what we're doing to our seas?

And I suppose what would be your earliest memories kind of when you finished in college and when you really got into kind of the filmmaking and underwater side of things?

Well, I've had a few careers, Ian.

I think life's too short to be stuck on one thing.

So I played music from when I was about 16, played in rock bands in Ennis.

And that really was my dream to be a musician.

So literally a week after I finished college, I waited for my brother to get married, his wedding.

And then I was on a plane to New York to be to be the next few too, which clearly didn't happen.

Do you think that maybe people have the wrong, maybe, conception of them?

Ken, you would be worried about people interfering with dolphins.

Hi Anton, how are you? I look, I mean, not hugely.

When we talk about, you know, seeing more dolphins in inshore waters, you're talking about common dolphins and this has been a trend for 20, 25 years now.

People interacting with dolphins, I suppose, we have a remarkable number of solitary bottlenose dolphins in Ireland for some reason.

There's essentially always three or four or five or six.

and you know we do have swimmers and people getting in the water with them and touching them and rubbing them which really we shouldn't do uh it's dangerous for us and it's not great for them because they usually end up getting vilified um but yeah we're seeing we're seeing more common dolphins coming into our which is probably due to climate change due to changes in their movements of their prey depletion of fish stocks etc but uh look it's a great opportunity for people to see a wild animal in its own habitat I mean what large wild animals do we have left in Ireland on land you know maybe deer um whereas you know anybody who's been to sea you go out in your boat you know you find common dolphins pretty quickly and beautiful animals they'll come and uh ride in the bow of your boat for a while and then take off and when they're you know bored with that or whatever

And Ken, do you understand the lack of fear that people have for them? Because if it was a land animal that weighed several hundred pounds, was made entirely of muscle, was a predator and had lots of teeth, people would probably be less eager to go up and give it a rub.

Oh, absolutely.

Why do you feel that description is misleading?

Well, I mean, this incident happened off Waterford on Tuesday and yeah, so why is it misleading? So what we know from the facts now was a group of men went out on a relatively small boat with the intention of catching sharks and What you do is you mince up some mackerel and put it in the water, which we call chum, and the shark follows the scent of that.

It thinks that there's something there to eat.

You put out some bait on a line on a large hook, probably a mackerel, the shark sees the mackerel, it's what he eats, he goes to eat it and of course he gets stuck with the hook and his whole body weight is pulled by a hook in his mouth for maybe half an hour or an hour they're fighting and then he's hauled up on board where he's drowning because obviously sharks extract oxygen from the water by passing them over their gills so he's drowning as you would be if I pulled you down under the water.

And meanwhile, you know, there's several men around him and he lashes out at one because he's fighting for his life at this stage and bites the hapless man who we hope is making a good recovery now.

And the newspapers all, one media outlet after another, write down to BBC, they frame it as a shark attack.

And the headlines are completely misleading because they say, man bitten off by shark off Waterford Coast.

Whatever the decision was, it is still misleading to describe it as a shark attack in

These reports of the mauve stinger jellyfish in Ballyvaughan, how usual or unusual is it to see this particular species in that particular?

Well, I mean, they're in our waters.

Moth stingers, their scientific name is Pelagia noctiluca, nightlights.

Most of them are brown.

I don't know why somebody called them moth stingers, because you literally get about one in a hundred that are actually a purpley moth color.

But we do see them from time to time.

It's quite enigmatic.

Can that be the case,

But I guess, you know, some people might wonder, are they really as dangerous as many people think? But, and I do know some businesses in Clare have highlighted the different, it depends what type or breed of jellyfish really, doesn't it, Ken? The type of jellyfish you encounter can dictate how severe the threat or sting might be.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, I mean, we have six species in Ireland that we would see on a regular basis.

The most common would be the moon jellyfish.

Now, they're the kind of transparent ones with the four purple rings on them.

And they're absolutely harmless to people.

I mean, they'll sting fish, but they're harmless to us.

But every creature has its part to play and jellyfish are much more important than pests, aren't they?