March 16, 2021

Anna Murray 

The rare sighting of a young walrus was spotted by a 5-year-old girl and her father on March 14 on Valentia Island in Ireland’s County Kerry. Alan Houlihan told Irish news media he and his daughter Muireann spotted the mammal on rocks while walking out on an Irish beach.

Walruses, Odobenus rosmarus, often live near the Arctic Circle and hunt for shellfish in shallow water. The humongous creatures usually clamber up onto the icebergs and beaches to rest. However, walruses are rarely seen along the Irish shoreline. The first recorded walrus sighting in Ireland occurred in 1897, but no other sighting until the 1980s.

A local marine biologist Kevin Flannery from Dingle Ocean world Aquarium figured that the young walrus might fall asleep on an iceberg, drifted off into the mid-Atlantic and finally reached the Irish waters, tired and hungry.

Tom Arnbom, a World Wide Fund(WWF)-Sweden's senior advisor on the Arctic and its marine life, estimated there are about 20,000 walruses in the North Atlantic. Globally they are threatened by climate change and shipping routes that have killed thousands of such mammals in the Pacific Ocean near Alaska and north-eastern Russia. However, walruses can survive better in the Atlantic because of the convenient feeding grounds.

Muireann went home and drew pictures of the adorable walrus. Meanwhile, she came up with two names for it: Isabelle if it’s a girl, and Cian if it’s a boy.

Photo:Webshot.