Sea Watch News

The east coast of Britain has had yet another spate of humpback whale sightings over the last couple of days. It all started at Hackley Bay where Kevin Hepworth (SWF Regional Coordinator) was the first to see signs of a single humpback whale at around 10:30 on 15th January. Later that day, Tim Marshall caught sight of two animals from Balmedie (approximately 10 miles south of the initial sighting). The animals were very active displaying percussive behaviour including tail slaps during which the animal lifts its tail fluke out of the water and slams it back down again.

The following day the animals were reported another three times from Balmedie. A single animal was seen twice at 12:30 and 14:30 by Kevin and ABZ rare Birds and two individuals were seen at 15:45 by Dany Heptinstall. The behaviour Dany described contrasted strongly with Sunday's exuberant splashing.

“They weren't giving us the best views - no tail flipping or breaching - but we did clearly see their backs. We found the best way to view them was to look for the blows and the spray moving across the water.”

So far, no photos have been taken of these particular animals. As with many cetaceans, humpback whales can be identified using white patches on their tail flukes and marks and scars elsewhere on their bodies. Identifying individual animals enables scientists to monitor animals closely which, in turn, contributes to their conservation and protection. Last year, there was a similar series of sightings of single humpback whales around Montrose and Aberdeenshire. Could one of these 2012 whales be the same animal? Any photos of these animals constitute valuable data, so if you are in the area and intend to go cetacean watching, please don't forget you camera!!

For any further information about photo-ID techniques, to report a sighting or send in photos of a sighting, email sightings@seawatchfoundation.org.uk or go to our online sightings form. All sightings will be displayed on our recent sightings page

The next National Whale and Dolphin Watch dates have been fixed for 27^th July to the 28^th July 2012.

Members of the public are once again invited to take part, either by helping our trained observers or by sending in sightings. This is an opportunity for everyone to become involved in the research which goes into understanding these magnificent creatures. The results of the watch provide a snapshot of the distribution of whales, dolphins and porpoises around the British Isles and are helping inform scientific debate on any change in the range and distribution of species.

If you would like to organise a watch anywhere in the UK, please contact our sightings officer Danielle danielle.gibas@seawatchfoundation.org.uk. All organised watches will be published closer to the event on the NWDW 2012 page of the SWF website.

When Stephanie Wright started her cetacean watch at Berry Head, Torbay on Christmas morning, little did she know that she was about to witness some extraordinary cetacean behaviour. Two harbor porpoise had been feeding normally for a few minutes when Stephanie noticed splashing to her left. Taking her eyes off the porpoise she turned her attention to the commotion.

She explains:

“A bottlenose dolphin was leaping fully out of the water. It repeated this leap three or four times. It was more like a belly flop than the graceful leaps that I’ve seen dolphins do. I then noticed the harbor porpoise darting underneath the dolphin and initially read the behaviour as an attack. At times, the excitement died down and the two would to swim calmly side by side. Then the behaviour changed and the dolphin started to “roll” around the porpoise exposing its belly. For the next fifteen minutes, three distinct behaviours were observed: the dolphin lifting the porpoise out of the water using its belly; the dolphin pushing the porpoise under the surface or directing it towards land and the porpoise trying to break away using spurts of speed. After a while, the porpoise increased the intensity of its evasive behaviour and started to tail slap the surface of the water and the dolphin itself.”

Eventually, Stephanie lost sight of the porpoise as it made another attempt to get away heading north towards Torquay. It was at that point that she noticed that a group of six other bottlenose dolphins had appeared in the area and were closely following the bottlenose dolphin and harbour porpoise as they swam into the distance. They eventually all joined but at this point they were too far away for Stephanie to determine what was happening.

Sea Watch director Peter Evans was intrigued by Stephanie’s account.

“The behaviour of the dolphin is not typical for the way dolphins usually kill porpoises and using the belly suggests to me that it at least did not start out as a direct attack. Since Stephanie didn’t see any violent tossing nor the dolphin jump onto the harbour, but more pushing instead this does not at all resemble a normal kill attempt.”

It’s always a privilege to have extraordinary sightings such as this reported and Sea Watch would like to thank Stephanie for her dedication. The Christmas morning watch certainly paid off for her!

To see Stephanie's photos click here

Hunstanton locals were treated to the spectacle of a stranded sperm whale on Old Hunstanton Beach on Christmas Eve. The animal was in a fairly advanced state of decomposition and along with the absence of marks in the sand this would suggest that the animal had been floating in the sea for some time and had washed up dead. Members of BDMLR even suggested that this body could be the same one as was spotted off Holbeach some weeks back.

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Sightings of sperm whales tend to increase between December and February but it is difficult to say whether this stranding is part of that trend or whether the animal drifted simply drifted into British waters with currents.

More information on sperm whale distribution is available on species page and in the UK cetacean status review