Wally the wandering walrus is back in Wales! Meandering marine mammal pops up on RNLI boathouse slipway in Tenby after first appearing in Ireland
- Wally the walrus had not been seen since Sunday when he was in Pembrokeshire
- The arctic marine mammal has been spotted on the British isles three times
- It was first seen on the coast of County Kerry in west Ireland on March 15
Wally the walrus has been spotted back in Wales after it went missing from British shores for six days.
The wandering walrus was sighted on the slipway of the RNLI boathouse in Tenby this morning, after it was last seen in Pembrokeshire on Sunday.
It had vanished for the second time, prompting locals to fondly call it ‘Wally’, in a reference to the children’s puzzle book series Where’s Wally?
Crowds gathered by the boathouse to take pictures as the walrus sunbathed on the slipway.
Wally the walrus has been spotted back in Wales after the meandering mammal was first spotted in Ireland
The wandering walrus was sighted on the slipway of the RNLI boathouse in Tenby this morning, after it was last seen in Pembrokeshire on Sunday
It was first seen on the coast of County Kerry in west Ireland on March 15 before making the 450km journey to Pembrokeshire in Wales on March 21.
The RSPCA were called out to check on the creature — which is ‘underweight’ — at the bottom of a cliff near Broad Haven South beach last week.
Experts believe the walrus is a young adult, but it is not possible to determine the gender, as both males and females have tusks.
They said the animal may have dozed off on a block of ice and drifted across the ocean in its trip to Ireland.
Crowds gathered by the boathouse to take pictures as the walrus sunbathed on the slipway
RSPCA animal rescue officer Ellie West told Radio 4’s Today programme on Sunday said the creature is still an ‘it’ as rescue officers couldn’t determine its gender before it swam off again.
Rumours about how the walrus made its way from the Arctic to Ireland have been swirling since the sightings.
Some claim that it fell asleep on an iceberg and ended up drifting across the Atlantic.
Welsh Marine Life Rescue’s Cleopatra Browne was called to the Pembrokeshire coast to investigate the sighting last week and found the walrus ‘sat there, chilling’.
Countless Twitter users rushed online to dub the creature Wally the Walrus – with Ms Browne saying it is ‘Wally by name, Wally by nature’
She said ‘it was about the size of a cow’ adding: ‘I’ve seen them on telly and the news but it was huge.’
She told BBC News: ‘There is a tale going around that it fell asleep on an iceberg and ended up drifting across and woke up in Ireland – and then ended up in Wales on the way home.’
Countless Twitter users rushed online to dub the creature Wally the Walrus – with Ms Browne saying it is ‘Wally by name, Wally by nature’.
On Sunday, Ms West said: ‘Whilst it is a very unusual sight […] it is quite a sad occurrence because we have to remember that this walrus is a very, very long way from where he should be.
‘We’re talking about a wild animal that’s still very mobile. He’s very big, we’re talking about much bigger than our normal seals. This one, although he’s of a large size he is a bit underweight.
‘At the moment we don’t know where he is, he swam away.’