"The last couple of years our trips have become totally disappointing.”
A whale-watching tour company in southwest Ireland has closed, saying that the waters, once teeming with cetaceans, have been overfished, depriving the whales and dolphins of food.
Colin Barnes, owner of the two-person, single-boat whale watching company Cork Whale Watch, announced on social media that he would no longer run the tours after some early-season tours saw no whales. Barnes, who started the company in 2001 after years of watching whales off Ireland’s west coast as a commercial fisherman, said that overfishing of sprat had depleted the food supply for whales and dolphins, causing them to migrate to other parts of the North Atlantic to search for food.
“All we have now in our search area is just a f