Despite being rather early in the season for turtles, which can be spotted up to 20 times a year in our waters in high summer, the hardy Leatherback had a swim around the mouth of the Shannon estuary, where he was spotted by a member of the Irish Whale and Dolphin group.

It is thought the unseasonably warm weather in April and May may have contributed to the early sighting of the turtle, which was believed to be a young adult.

Under the Irish Sea Leatherback Turtle Project, two turtles were tagged in the summer of 2005 and tracked online for over a year by scientists and the public. However, according to Dr Tom Doyle of University College Cork, who has been involved in the project from the start, turtles arriving in Ireland this summer will no longer be tagged.

"There are so few turtles in the Irish seas that it is very difficult to catch one, " he said.

"Instead, we worked with the salmon fishermen of Dingle for the last four years and the two turtles we tagged were found because they got caught in their nets. Now that the ban has come in and they're not fishing any more, we have to find new ways of finding turtles."