X-Ray Mag

Ireland

Basking shark
The basking shark is a globally threatened species which faces a high risk of extinction

Basking shark gains special protected status in Ireland

3 months ago By Main minion

In Ireland, new regulations giving the basking shark the "protected wild animal" status under the Wildlife Act came into effect on 9 October. The order was signed by Minister of State for Heritage Malcolm Noonan, and Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue. This legislation was heavily supported by the Irish Basking Shark Group (ISBG), an international network of researchers, educators, and community representatives founded in 2009.

South West Technical Diving

Ireland’s specialist and globally recognised technical centre, South West Technical Diving is delighted to support Peter and the team at X-Ray magazine.

We focus on technical training, trips and equipment.

For training, we are a TDI Dive Centre and ANDI facility and offer Cave Training (Open or closed circuit) to full and stage cave, Rebreather Training to full trimix on the JJ-CCR and Liberty Sidemount CCR and all levels of tech training up to instructor level.

Mmo iwdg / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0
Long-finned pilot whale cow with her calf, off the coast of Ireland. Photo by Mmo iwdg / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

Buoy in Celtic Sea tracks oceanic noise

1 year ago By Catherine GS Lim

Equipped with an autonomous hydrophone, the buoy's function is to conduct for the first time real-time acoustic monitoring of the water's cetaceans to assess how oceanic noise pollution affects them. 

Deployed as part of the Smart Whale Sounds project, it will also track the distribution and behaviour of whale species in real-time and be used to train machine learning models to identify different species' calls. 

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