More support needed for river Lee’s otters, campaigners say, as fight is captured on camera

Cork City Council has been urged to facilitate the installation of more cameras to monitor otter activity on the river Lee after a wildlife campaigner captured footage of two otters fighting just upstream of the city.

Chris Moody of the Save Our Bride Otters campaign group in Blackpool took the video at the Lee Fields, showing one otter ambushing another in the water. They continue to fight each other for several seconds before one flees to the bank to be pursued by the other.

Otter expert Dr Paddy Sleeman, recently retired from the Department of Zoology at UCC, said that UCC zoologists have carried out a DNA analysis of otter droppings or spraints found at sites on both the north and south channels of the Lee, which revealed that there are 11 otters living around Cork City in the Lee and its tributaries.

“There are otters everywhere you can think of in Ireland including in urban areas like in the Liffey in Dublin and the Shannon flowing through Limerick, but Cork City has a particularly high density of otters – they live off fish such as trout and salmon and eels as well as crabs and rats.”

Dr Sleeman said there is a higher density of otters living around Cork Harbour but they swim up the north and south channel of the Lee through the city centre to get to fresh water to clean their fur, so they can often be seen from many of the city’s quays and bridges.

“We have fitted camera traps in culverts to monitor otter movements and we know that eight otters use the Bride in Blackpool, but we know that most nights otters swim up the north channel by Fitzgerald Park and it would be great if we could fit a camera trap there.

“We’d like Cork City Council to take more notice of the otters – there’s the potential here to have the city’s entire otter population monitored, which would be useful for a lot of reasons. It’s unusual that the citizens of a city can get to see wildlife like this on their doorstep.

“Historically, Cork has always been home to otters – we have records of an otter attacking a US serviceman in the city centre during World War I and of workers in Ladyswell brewery on the Watercourse Road saving an otter and her cubs washed into them during a flood in the 1950s.”

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Dr Sleeman said it was clear from the sounds that the otters were making in the video that one male was attacking the other, which is not unusual as otters are very territorial – but to capture such an attack on film was rare.

“These guys are going at it big-time – otters are very territorial and fight quite a lot and males can grow to 16kg, so they often have bruises, and one of the ones that we’ve been observing has a missing canine – you’d see him around the city and he’s quite aggressive and hisses at people.”

Mr Moody said: “They came out of the river but they were so engrossed with each other that they did not notice me until they were literally at my feet – one continued around and behind me and back into the Lee and the chaser did an abrupt turn and dived into the river.”

Meanwhile Save Our Bride Otters, a group opposing the current proposals from the OPW for flood relief in Blackpool, which it says threatens the otters on the Bride, were honoured this week by lord mayor of Cork Cllr Dan Boyle with a Lord Mayor’s Community and Voluntary Award.