This is a completely free land based watch (no boat-trips involved), and experienced IWDG guides / spotters will be on hand to give you the best chance of spotting some of the 24 cetacean species encountered around the Irish coast.

Some of the species you’re most likely to spot include harbour porpoise, common dolphin, bottlenose dolphin, minke whale, if you’re lucky you may see fin whales blowing offshore, and if you’re REALLY lucky perhaps a humpback will put in an appearance.

As with all wildlife related events, there are no guarantees you’ll see anything – but the anticipation and uncertainty all adds to the excitement… and it’s a fabulous, free family outing at some of Ireland’s most spectacular natural locations.

Here’s a list of Whale Watch Ireland 2010 locations from the IWDG site:

Location	Meeting Point	Watch Leader
Howth Head, Dublin	Balscadden Car Park	Brian Glanville
Bray Head, Wicklow	Pitch & putt car park	Dinah Boyne
Hook Head, Wexford	Hook Lighthouse	Kevin Mc Cormick
Ardmore, Waterford	Ram Head signal tower	Andrew Malcolm
Galley Head, Cork	Lighthouse	Pádraig Whooley
Garranes, Beara, Cork	Dzogchen Beara Ctr	Patrick Lyne
Slea Head, Dingle Penisula, Kerry	Slea Head Shrine	Nick Massett
Brandon Point, Kerry	Car park	Mick O’Connell
Loop Head, Clare	Lighthouse	Aoife Foley
Black Head, Clare	Lighthouse	Joanne O’Brien
Downpatrick Head, Mayo	Car park	Conor Ryan
Mullaghmore Head, Sligo	Mullaghmore lay by	Fiona Farrell
Lough Swilly, Donegal	Fort Dunree	Dermot Mc Laughlin
Portstewart Head, Derry	Harbour Hill	Jim Allen
Larne, Antrim	Larne Town Park, Glenarm Rd	Ian Enlander

So get yourself to a headland near you on Sunday to find out more about the whales and dolphins around Ireland, and hopefully see a few for yourself.

I’ll be at the Galley Head watch in Cork… if you’re in the vicinity come say hello!

Image via Wikipedia

The sea was like a sheet of black glass.

I’d never seen the Atlantic quite so calm before. It was eerily silent, not a breath of wind. As I dipped my paddle into the shimmering surface I couldn’t help but feel rising disquiet as I contemplated what the darkness beneath me might conceal.

I pushed the notion aside and paddled on.

Ahead of me the aptly named High Island rose out of the sea, illuminated, for once, by that scarcest of West Cork commodities: glorious morning sunshine. Viewed from the vantage point of a kayak out on the open water it was a truly breathtaking vista.

We’d spent the night camping on Rabbit Island just off the coast near Myross. There were nine of us in total: my wife and I, another couple and five children. We’d ferried all of the gear and people over on two inflatable kayaks the previous afternoon, and had a wonderful evening with a view out over High Island and the Atlantic Ocean that’s simply out of this world.

Early the next morning we heard the seals calling out around High Island and Seal Rock, it was flat calm, so two of us decided to hop in the kayaks to investigate.

The other island turned out to be further away than it looked, but we reached it without incident and headed around to the ocean-facing side through a channel between the rocks. That’s where we encountered the seals.

There were a dozen or more grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) on the rocks. As we passed them they entered the water and swam up for a closer look. They ranged in size from cute youngsters through mid-sized females to a couple of enormous bulls. The size of the bulls made me nervous at first, but they were more curious than anything else. They’d take it in turns to pop up in front of the kayaks and lift their heads well out of the water for a good look before flipping over with a spectacular splash and disappearing into the depths.

The seals stayed with us as we paddled along, obviously enjoying some sort of seal-game that we weren’t privy to.

We progressed along the spectacular cliffs on the ocean-facing side of the island, but my attention was mainly on the horizon. It’s big whale season off Ireland’s south coast, and I was looking for something specific. Suddenly I spotted it… a plume of water vapour erupting from the sea towards the horizon… rising vertically before being carried sideways by the offshore breeze, then another, and another. Fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus)!

There was no way we were ever going to attempt to head out to sea on kayaks for a closer encounter with these oceanic leviathans, but it was a thrill just to see the tell-tale blows and know they were nearby. The second largest creature ever to have lived on earth was swimming about a scant few kilometres off shore, and here we were in the same vicinity paddling along in ten-foot inflatable kayaks.

It was an amazing feeling.

Our seal entourage stayed with us as we rounded High Island and headed back across open water to our base on Rabbit Island. It had been a remarkable and memorable wildlife encounter… an experience that will stay etched in my memory long after the aching in my muscles has subsided.

Check it out for yourself if you haven’t seen it already:

It’s already received around 2.3 million views on YouTube, and has elevated the starring duo to pseudo-celebrity status in their home town. It featured on all the prominent media channels in the UK, including the BBC and Sky News, and received massive coverage in the press.

This is yet another example of how well-executed digital content can reach a massive audience, cross over into “traditional” media, which in turn drives more people back online, adding to the viral effect.

Everybody say “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch”!

Even more exciting though is the fact that the level of engagement on the page seems to be increasing dramatically. More people who are interested in Irish nature and wildlife are submitting their photos, links and comments all the time. They’re answering each other’s questions, and establishing their own conversations on the page. Every day it feels less like an online destination and more like an online community, and that’s great to be a part of.

It’s also a reminder that I should plan some time to work on the accompanying irelandswildlife.com website ASAP. It is on the way… honest!

Meanwhile though, if you haven’t seen the Ireland’s Wildlife page on Facebook why not check it out? There are some great posts up there, and it would be wonderful to get your input and insight up there too.

Here are a couple of shots of the Giant’s Causeway — one conventional, one a bit different. These are straight off the iPhone with no post processing or any other digital jiggery pokery applied.

I’ll post some shots from Northern Ireland and Scotland taken with a real camera once I get home.

Seems the two German discount supermarkets must be taking their toll on Tesco’s market share to prompt this kind of response.

One of the shots featured is this amazing image of Long Strand in West Cork – somewhere we visit with him and his family every summer when they’re over here. I’m sure Alfredo wouldn’t mind me sharing it with you here:

Photo Copyright © 2008 Alfredo Caliz, all rights reserved.

Image by fraunix via Flickr

I’ve been checking out this series of free online marketing workbooks from Dave Navarro’s “The Launch Coach” library.

Dave is a no-nonsense, cut the bull expert on turning what you do into a marketable, scaleable product that you can sell online.

What I particularly like about Dave’s stuff so far is the way he cuts through the online hype of more typical “web gurus” and delivers really valuable information right from the start.

One of the biggest problems with my online writing and consultancy business is the fact that it relies very much on direct input from me… and no matter how much I might wish for it, I’m simply not scalable. When I’m operating at capacity, that’s it – I can’t accept new business without letting go of something I’m already working on.

I’ve been thinking about how to change that business model a lot lately, and Dave’s Launch Coach Library, and regular product-launch related blog posts might be just the catalyst I need to take that crucial next step..

Why not Grab The Launch Coach Library workbooks for yourself? They’re well worth a read… and could make a real difference to your online business.

I use it all the time for looking up quick things online, to catch up with the feeds in my RSS reader, to make productive use of time spent waiting, to organise my calendar and to-do lists, to listen to music and podcasts.

Just occasionally I even use it as a phone .

There are apps for practically everything under the sun… lots of them available for free from the app store. In the short time I’ve had the iPhone it’s become an indespensible tool that makes life easier in lots of different ways.

One thing I never really expected to be doing on the iPhone though was writing blog posts… but guess what… there’s an app for that!

WordPress for iPhone is an intuitive little app from the lovely people at WordPress.org. It makes managing comments, responding to them and even creating and editing posts and pages easy, any time, anywhere.

I’ve only just installed it but so far so good.

Update: There’s also a WordPress for Android, for those of you using Android smartphones.

Image via CrunchBase

My mobile is banjaxed.

If you follow me on Twitter you already know that I’ve been wrestling with the decision of whether to get an iPhone 3Gs or an HTC Desire Android handset. I asked the question on Twitter and, predictably, I got a flood of recommendations both ways.

Both phones have a similar price tag, on pretty much the same mobile tariffs on the Irish networks that carry them both, and by and large, for what I need, both will do the same job.

My inner geek was screaming “Android” – because there’s a part of me that loves the open ethos of the Android operating system and rails against the closed corporate policies of Apple Inc.

Then again, there’s another part of me that values the polished sleekness of the iPhone’s design, and the absolutely top-notch user interface of the iPhoneOS. Both phones were was neck and neck in terms of recommendations: most of my techie contacts and friends recommended the Android phone, while non-techie business connections and friends came in firmly behind the iPhone.

In the end I think it was the maturity of Apple’s app-store compared to the Android marketplace that swung me towards the iPhone. There seem to be issues with buying apps from the Android Marketplace in Ireland – something that I guess curtails the scope of Android devices, at least in the short term.

So I’ve gone for the iPhone on Vodafone, and will be picking it up in Clonakilty on Thursday.

Ultimately there was little separating the two devices, and to be honest even with the app-store thing I can’t really put my finger on why exactly I chose the iPhone over the HTC. It was more of a gut feeling, an instinct, than anything else. Getting the iPhone just feels “right” for some reason.

Whether it turns out to be the right decision, I guess time will tell.