Ireland's coast celebrated in new series examining research, history, and future
Rté Ireland's Wildlife Jane Rté Garczynski, A At One Three Part Marine In Biologist, September On Sunday, And 30pm 6 And Starting Series 15 Coast, Player
What use are they? Are they any good for anything? Often typical questions asked when a ‘less glamorous’ species or a creature with a ‘bad rap sheet’ is mentioned.
Jellyfish and their much smaller cousins, zooplankton and phytoplankton, are regular victims of this attitude.
But they have a starring role in a new three-part natural history documentary series starting on RTÉ One next Sunday, September 15.
Marine and wildlife biologist, Jane Garczynski from Kerry, has researched jellyfish and zooplankton along the coast and is quick to point out their value: “They are the start of the food chain for all ocean life — they are eaten by larger species of fish and are incredibly valuable.” This whole series aims to uncover unseen marvels of the Irish coast for the first time and celebrates our coasts' fascinating origins, rich biodiversity and magnetic charm.
Garczynski is also keen to raise awareness of the pioneering work of another Kerry woman, Maude Jane Delap (1866-1953) who lived on Valentia Island. She was a self-taught marine biologist who was the first person to breed jellyfish in captivity, allowing her to observe their full life cycle for the first time.
Garczynski, 28, acknowledges that “there is a negative connotation to jellyfish”.
“People don't understand that they are a natural and very normal part of our environment. They play a role in marine food chains but unfortunately they are seen as a nuisance species. I find them very unique and very bizarre. There’s an alien kind of beauty about them. I could stare at them for hours, I find them very tranquil and very soothing. So when I heard about Kerry having its own pioneer female jellyfish researcher I was just completely blown away.” Maude Delap wasn’t formally trained as a marine researcher but when a team of six scientists from University College London arrived in Kerry to study the flora and fauna of Valentia Harbour her family began helping them.
Garczynski notes that Delap’s scientific achievements, while significant in their own right, are even more impressive when you take into account the conditions in which she worked: “Maude would have rowed out to the harbour in her small punt. And she would tow her plankton net behind her. Maude and her sister Constance were in full Victorian garb so there was a lot of hauling of plankton nets while wearing puffy sleeves and bonnets.” Her practicality and matter-of-factness helped Delap achieve so much: in the 1920s she found the first complete True’s beaked whale stranded on a Kerry shore. She needed help from strong locals in moving the creature’s remains for research for the Natural History Museum so she wrote requesting that they “send money for fags and drink”. The Museum responded suggesting that she use ‘provisions’ as the euphemism on her invoice.
Delap’s fine eye for detail allowed her record tiny anatomical details which scientists today can use to compare to plankton they observe on powerful modern microscopes.
“Maude’s house had no electricity so she would have had to do her work on a clear day and she must have had so much patience and skill for all this,” says Garczynski.
Other scientists of that era had tried and failed to observe the full life cycle of a jellyfish in captivity. It proved particularly difficult to simulate the perfect conditions — such as the right temperature, fresh supplies of plankton, mimicking tidal movement. Scientists experimented with bell-jars and complicated plunger systems to try recreate tidal conditions for the jellyfish but still couldn’t succeed.
Delap’s perseverance won through for her: years later her nephew asked her about how she managed to keep the seawater circulating in the bell-jars and she smiled and waved her hand in a circular motion. She had literally rolled up her sleeves and stirred the water by plunging her hands in.
Garczynski says she was honoured to get permission from the Valentia Heritage Museum to use Delap’s gold-coloured relatively low-tech (compared to today’s instruments) microscope. “It still works perfectly.”
Garczynski studied at Munster Technological University, Kerry and later at University College Cork but points out that while she grew up and went to school in Kerry she was never taught about Delap’s achievements in school. That’s something she would love to see change: “She had these amazing sketches with so much attention to detail which helped build so much of our knowledge of these gelatinous species off Britain and Ireland. She was in correspondence with a lot of prestigious scientists and I would love to see wider recognition of her work and achievements.”
Delap’s notes are also invaluable in helping modern-day scientists learn about conditions and prevalence at that time. These tiny gelatinous zooplankton don’t preserve particularly well and they are not really as present in the fossil record as larger creatures because of their small delicate and fragile bodies so accurate descriptions of features and species are vital. And even the commonly-held notion that jellyfish numbers have wildly increased in recent years is challenged by Delap’s accounts such as when she describes a ‘jellyfish event’ where they were so abundant that they made it difficult for fishermen to lift their nets.
In 1928 Maude Delap was honoured by her scientific colleagues when a rare sea anemone she found near Valentia was named Edwardsia delapiae in her honour.
Garczynski's own jellyfish and zooplankton research was impacted when funding issues due to Brexit arose. She has since become a researcher with Inland Fisheries Ireland but still hopes for increased recognition for Maude Delap's achievements.
This series is narrated by actor Ciarán Hinds of , , and fame and was inspired by the landmark , published by Cork University Press in 2020.
The first episode explores Ireland’s territorial waters and cold water coral reefs hidden in the canyons and there’s a dramatic journey with the Marine Institute of Ireland to the Porcupine Bank, to examine the role of weather buoys in the deep Atlantic.
Upcoming episodes explore how technological advances and local communities are striving to protect the coast and how innovative and imaginative thinking can create more sustainable conditions for this dynamic landscape into the future.
- is a three-part series starting Sunday, September 15 at 6.30pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player