He's gone, lads.
A dolphin spotted swimming around Galway Bay is probably not Fungie, despite our hope and best efforts to will it to be so.
After footage of a dolphin swimming alongside a boat was shared on social media, Fungie fans and regular folk alike began speculating as to whether the iconic dolphin has simply jumped ship and settled in Galway instead.
Alas, this is most likely not the case. Sorry.
Whale Watch West Cork's Nic Slocum told
Newstalk's Lunchtime Live that it is very unlikely that the age-old dolphin has moved to Galway from Dingle.
https://twitter.com/galway_together/status/1366125527543783424?s=20
"The dolphin you saw jumping in that video is almost certainly a short-beaked common dolphin," he said. "It's kind of difficult because the film was taken into the sun, so it's difficult to tell exactly what species it is.
"But it's most likely to be a short-beaked common dolphin - and Fungie of course, as you probably know, is a bottle-nose dolphin.
"The bottle-nose dolphin is a good two and a half-times bigger than the short-beaked common dolphin. They both jump out of the water like that, in the way that Fungie used to when he was down in Dingle, and of course short-beaked common dolphins do when there's boat activity."
But is there a chance, Nic? Is there a hope? Is there a glimmer of something that this dolphin, that is clearly a different specie of dolphin altogether, is actually Fungie?
"I would say that it's most unlikely that it's Fungie," said Nic. Well, that's that then.
Fungie was first reported missing late last year when locals discovered that the famous dolphin was nowhere to be seen in Dingle harbour.
After months of speculation and searches, it's expected that Fungie has either tragically passed away or simply left Ireland forever. There were several false alarms (much like the above sighting), but ultimately, the dolphin was nowhere to be found.
