An Awesome Autumn for Sightings: Whale Track Summary
©Islay Sea Adventures
As the nights draw in and the winter chill starts to bite, we look back on an awesome autumn for sightings.
Despite being past the peak sightings season of summer, autumn has proven to be anything but quiet! We are excited to see what winter has to offer over the coming months. With a fantastic 10% increase in sightings this autumn compared to last year, our fantastic Whale Track community has submitted:
169 excursions
103 land-based surveys
1238 casual sightings
88 photographs
Resulting in a total of 2,125 sightings of over 20,000 animals from 12 different species.
Our final podium of 2024 sees common dolphins once again claiming the top spot with 844 sightings of over 15,000 animals, while the harbour porpoise comes in second with 686 sightings of over 2600 animals, and the minke whale continues to claim 3rd place with 167 sightings of 192 animals.
*This data has not been analysed or corrected for effort.
A WAVE OF WHITE BEAKS
White-beaked dolphins have a relatively restricted range and are only found in the temperate and subarctic waters of the North Atlantic. The Hebrides are towards the southern extreme of their range. Rarely seen alone, they are usually seen in groups of 5 to 20 animals, and occasionally form larger groups of several hundred individuals. Liam Pritchard was lucky enough to see an incredible pod of approx. 250 white beaked dolphins in Mousa Sound, while in Shetland in October.
From land he watched 100’s of white beaked dolphins, traveling, porpoising, and breaching as they travelled south, passing Sumburgh Head.
Shetland Wildlife also shared, on their social media page, this incredible aerial footage taken by Hugh Harrop.
©Liam Pritchard
BOW RIDING BOTTLENOSE
Islay Sea Adventures sent in this fantastic footage of a large pod of playful bottlenose dolphins that started bow riding their boat and travelling alongside them as they maintained a steady course and speed.
The pod, which they estimated as having up to 50 individuals, were spread out across a large area and included adults, juveniles and calves.
“It was a great sighting, with the group staying in the area for a while. Even watching them from shore, you could see the calves leaping around. Great to hear that so many people on the island got to see them.”
HELLUVA LOT OF HUMPBACKS
This autumn has seen an impressive 91 sighting reports of humpback whales, from land-based surveys, excursions and casual reports. Some people have been lucky enough to get some brilliant footage of these enigmatic animals.
Polly Douglas, Catherine Cannon and Melody Holt had some spectacular views of this humpback whale in Loch Fyne near Inverary at the start of November. Sadly, during the same period, a humpback whale was found to be entangled in creel lines. Thankfully, the British Divers Mariner Life Rescue’s large whale disentanglement team was soon onsite and skilfully cut the whale free. Read more about this incredible rescue here.
©Catherine Cannon
©Polly Douglas
Meanwhile, up near Skye, Gordon Young was treated to a close encounter with a humpback whale in September, after spotting a blow in the distance and seeing a humpback travelling from the south northwards. Gordon was sailing his yacht west when this humpback swam under their boat.
©Gordon Young
©Chris
©Leigh Cannon
A couple weeks later in October, Chris reports seeing 2 humpbacks near Portree, while a week later Leigh Cannon spots 3 humpbacks a bit further north, off South Erradale. During the same period, this incredible footage was captured and shared by the Kyle Lifeboat crew during one of their weekly training exercises.
#EMBRACE YOUR WHALED SIDE CHALLENGE
After the success of our #EmbraceYourWhaledSide challenge last year, we are bringing it back this winter.
With an increase in reports this autumn compared to previous years, we are eager to continue the momentum into the winter months. The more data we can collect throughout the year, the more of an understanding we’ll have of the presence and absence of species in our seas year-round.
Whale Track sightings per month 2017 - Nov 2024
As you can see from the graph, the number of reports greatly reduce throughout the winter months, which is understandable as there are fewer species in our seas during this period. However, there are also less people on, and watching, the water. So, this winter, we are challenging everyone to don their raincoats and woolly hats and do an effort-based watch from land, even a 30-minute watch can provide vital data for an area. Or why not record your next ferry trip as an excursion?
Check out our wonders of winter watching blog to find out why winter watching is so important and get inspired to take part in our #EmbraceYourWhaledSide challenge.
Share your winter watch photographs with us and inspire others to do the same by tagging #EmbraceYourWhaledSide and @HWDT on Facebook or @HWDT_org on Instagram.
Thank you to our wonderful Whale Track community for sending in all your sightings and helping us continue to learn more about the whales in our waters.