There have been some great collapses in the sand cliff at the narrow end of the strand, where storm waves can attack the dunes directly. Freshly-stripped reefs of rock reach up into the base of the cliff, some draped with strange, flowing strata of sand that are actually stone-hard to walk over. Such erosion rips into structures that date back for centuries, perhaps millennia, and will need another ice age to renew. Along at the channel, the swirl of these agitated tides discovered an object in the sand and left it bared and gleaming in its own round basin. We advanced upon it with delight, recognising another relic of an old friend.
More than half a century ago, in the second World War, 30-metre sperm whale fetched up dead at Thallabawn and was promptly dismembered for its oil. At long intervals over the past 30 years, Ethna and I have come upon single, sand-scoured vertebrae - Henry Mooreish sculptures and just about portable. We hauled one back from holiday to our daffodil garden in Dublin. A second has gathered moss beneath the young oaks on the acre here. And now the third rests beside it, waiting for graffiti from perching robins.
Such ossuary preoccupations pale into eccentricity, of course, when compared to the live excitements of whale-watching. I would not normally raise the subject in January, but some striking observations this winter seem to challenge our ideas on the seasonal migration habits of the big baleen whales - and, indeed, about the inshore winter activity of Ireland's cetaceans in general.
They come notably from Padraig Whooley, committee member of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, who moved from Dublin to Cork last summer. He had a hunch, well supported by professional cetacean scientists such as Simon Berrow and Peter Evans, that the Celtic Sea and the south-western waters of Ireland are one of the richest areas for whales and dolphins in Europe, if not the world.
Last November, well outside the familiar summer-autumn peak of whale and dolphin "action", he took his binoculars and powerful 30X telescope (of the sort birders use) to the cliffs of Cape Clear Island, now a well-established vantage point for cetacean-watching.
On the first day, he had a clear view of 30 common dolphins and almost as many porpoises. On the second, he spent an hour watching a 10-metre minke whale, smallest of the rorquals, as it lunged among a feeding frenzy of seabirds off the island's south harbour.
On November 19th, in calm, cold weather, he was at his favourite look-out post on the Old Head of Kinsale when a movement of no fewer than eight enormous (17-metre) sei whales surfaced and blew off the headland. Some 60 or more dolphins arrived to join them, some bow-riding beside the whales as they hunted herring shoals.
The whales stayed in the area for almost a week, often within clear view of the golf club's car park. They were confirmed as sei by Simon Berrow (whale species have distinctive patterns of diving and blowing, as well as physical differences)) and were last seen, in a rising sou'westerly gale, by the crew of the naval vessel, L.E. Eithne.
Last June, watching from the cliff-tops of Kinsale and Cape Clear, and other perches at Dursey, Slea Head and Loop Head, Whooley has seen whales and/or dolphins on nearly all of more than 40 three-hour vigils: often more than one species and sometimes as many as four within binocular range. Even last week's calm spell added another pair of giants - sei or fin whales - blowing at about 25 km distant on the Old Head horizon.
Such sightings confirm the merit of Ireland's pioneering declaration, in 1991, that the waters out to 320 km from the coast - the state's fishery limits - are a sanctuary for whales and dolphins. Other states have followed suit. In November, the environment ministers of France, Italy and Monaco declared a similar sanctuary from the Cote d'Azur to Corsica and Sardinia and the Ligurian coast.
Apart from putting a halt to cetacean-hunting (a ban was actually already in legal effect around Ireland), what can declaring a sanctuary mean to the dozen or so species of whale and dolphin that regularly use our waters? How do we go about looking after them, and conserving their habitat? There are other threats to cetaceans than actually killing them on purpose - catching them by accident in trawls, for example, or poisoning them with pollutants such as organochlorines and PCBs (minke whales now carry such a burden of toxins that the Japanese may actually stop eating them).
Recent Irish studies of the accidental catching of dolphins suggest the numbers caught by trawlers in the Celtic Sea and off the west are "unsustainable" and need urgent monitoring. Unconfirmed reports have spoken of up to 50 dolphins netted in a single tow.
This will be one of the main themes for discussion at the European Cetacean Society conference to be held in Cork on April 2nd.
Meanwhile, Padraig Whooley has plans for whale-watching notice-boards at all the most promising headlands. The raising of public awareness certainly has some way to go. In Dingle last August, 100 people were interviewed as they queued for tour boats to go out to see Fungi, the people-friendly dolphin. Asked if they would expect to see dolphins anywhere else in Ireland, three-quarters of them said no.
Padraig Whooley is at 021-897312; e-mail: padwhorca@hotmail.com. For the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, contact Dr Emer Rogan, Department of Zoology and Animal Ecology, University College, Cork.
