A young dolphin has died this week after washing up on a Dublin beach, with a local group calling for answers.
On Friday 5 May, the body of a young common dolphin was discovered at Killiney Beach towards the White Rock, and its body was removed by Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council's Beach Department. It is understood than an autopsy has not yet been completed on the animal and currently its cause of death is unknown.
A spokesman for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council confirmed to Dublin Live: "On Friday afternoon the carcass was disposed of accordingly. There was no obvious explanation to us as to what had caused the death of the dolphin."
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Speaking to Dublin Live, a representative from voluntary group the Coastal Concern Alliance group, has raised concerns for local wildlife as drilling work is currently taking place to create 80m boreholes along the Kish and Bray sandbanks under a Foreshore Licence awarded to investigate this Annex 1 Habitat for construction of a wind farm. However, she acknowledged that at the moment it is unclear what caused the animal's' death and that it may not be connected to the drilling.
Last week, drilling began along the Kish and Bray sandbanks as Excalibur, the jack-up barge used for drilling works to create bore holes, began as a result of a Foreshore Licence awarded to investigate this Annex 1 Habitat for construction of a wind farm. The development is part of the Dublin Array Offshore Wind Farm which is being carried out by RWE with Irish company Saorgus Energy, and the wind farm development is located approximately 10km off the coast of Dublin and Wicklow counties in the Irish Sea.
The project will have an installed capacity of between 600 megawatts (MW) and 900 MW. The plan is to first drill 80m boreholes along the Kish and Bray sandbanks to check if it is suitable for the wind farm.
The representative from the Coastal Concern Alliance explained: "It's known that bores cause problems for all whales and dolphins as the noise can affect how they communicate and travel in the water, and between the north of Dublin and Dalkey Island and the south, there's a protected area for harbour porpoises.
"There's an awful lot of problems with this and we're the group that has been fighting this for the last 17 years, it's time to get the government to put proper planning in place but they simply haven't done it."
She added that there is now "huge concern" for the future of marine wildlife in the Dublin Bay area.
"The dolphin on Killiney Beach looked like quite a young dolphin, it was only about 6ft long, the person who took the picture said. Two of them within a week is very unusual."
Meanwhile, the Coastal Concern Alliance has also expressed concern over the proposed height of the wind farm turbines.
The proposal for the 39-52 turbines is a height of 270-308m each, while Poolbeg chimneys are 207m high. And there are also plans for a wind farm off Bray Head called the Codling Wind Farm, after permission was granted in 2005.
The Coastal Concern Alliance local group was set up in 2007 and they realised that the planning that was used to make decisions was "completely out of date", and the government eventually published the new legislation in 2021.
"The proposal of Dublin Bay, the one that they're drilling for at the moment, when they actually proposed that back in 2000 they put in an application to build a wind farm which was going to have turbines that are 80m high and the Poolbeg chimneys are 207m high, so these turbines were going to be a bit less of a third of the height.
"And now on the same site they want to put up turbines that are 308m high. It's one and a half times the size of the Poolbeg Chimneys."
The Coastal Concern Alliance group said that it acknowledges that the development of renewable energy is necessary but that "sites for developments should be carefully selected to avoid sensitive ecological areas".
"Dublin Bay is full of important species of birds, fish, bats, whales, harbour porpoise and dolphins. It's a Biosphere, but none of these facts have been taken into consideration in the plans for massive development all along the east coast."
Dublin Live has contacted the RWE and Saorgus Energy, and the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine for comment.
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