Water analysis and a new technique called eDNA will help us work out how many otters live in Ireland
Otters will spraint at vantage points near water. In Burrishoole all those years ago, I found spraints on grassy tidal islets, the mouths of streams, prominent rocks and small peaty mounds along the water’s edge. I remember one soft grassy tussock beside Burrishoole Bridge where the river cuts a deep channel, and the dense waters of Lough Furnace are flowing south through the seven-arched stone bridge towards Clew Bay and into the Atlantic.
Years later, I’d check that mound and find spraints each time. It’s no surprise; salmon, eels and other migratory fish have to navigate these narrow waters and, with hungry otters around , it’s a sniper’s alley for fish. For the lucky otter, it’s a feast. Where a spraint is found, you know an otter was around. But these faecal deposits, full of skeletal remains of their seasonal diets, tell a deeper story. In Burrishoole, I discovered the bones of eels, salmon, stickleback, sea scorpions, water beetles and butterfish, as well as crab claws in a few samples. Otters produce a jelly-like goo from their intestine, which they secrete before they spraint; it eases the passage of the multiple, sharp bones.
Researchers can extract DNA from spraints to find out the sex of the otter, whether individuals are related, and what other, non-boney prey they have eaten. Dr Sam Browett, a researcher at South East Technological University in Waterford, studies otters around Mayo’s internationally important limestone marl lake, Lough Carra. He wants to know each individual otter in the area and determine what they’re eating.
Although they hunt rats, birds, woodmice and rabbits – and, curiously enough, eat blackberries – otters have always seemed to me ill at ease on land. They lollop along a rocky coastline, beach or field, hurriedly going about their business, but theirs is a watery world. Once they slip into a stream or lake, leaving a V-shape ripple in their wake, they transform into aquatic athletes which can stay underwater for four minutes and easily outpace salmon or trout.
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