Maude Delap

Maude Delap was born in 1866 at Templecrone Rectory in County Donegal, the seventh of ten children in a household where curiosity ran deeper than formal schooling. She later carried that restless attention to Valentia Island, where she and her sister Constance dredged, netted and watched the sea until they became the first to breed jellyfish in captivity. The rectory gave her life, but the coast gave her work, and both still echo in every specimen she saved from forgetting.