Moray Firth Latest

Despite all the doom and gloom merchants reporting we were facing the worst winter weather for 20 years, we have enjoyed at least half of January in the warm sunshine, without a drop of rain. On 2 January, our first "watch" of 2006, I took part in a walk at Lossiemouth. It was just like a spring day - clear skies and flat calm seas - sadly no dolphins but it was great to be out and about in the fresh air.

As ever the Clavie fire festival which is held at Burghead was fantatic. This is an amazing sight and if you have never seen a fire festival make sure this is on your "to do" list for 2007. However this year some people said it was a bit tame compared to last year when we were forced to walk behind the fire at all times due to a force 8 gale!

At Aberdeen, the first sighting of the year was eleven dolphins at 11am on the first day of the year - very surreal if you think about it! Dolphins have been seen there most days of the month, with numbers from 5 to 45 being recorded, at times feeding right inside the harbour mouth. In Stonehaven and slightly further south, we have also been blessed with sightings of pilot whales and white sided dolphins. Here in the Moray Firth the first sighting of the year was on the 3 January over in the inner Firth at Fort George near Inverness. Throughout the month bottlenose dolphins and harbour porpoise were recorded on nine occasions in groups ranging from three to eight animals, What is exciting is that our surveys further north have shown a small group of porpoise which appear to be resident in the Firth during the winter months. Meanwhile, along the outer Moray Firth (Burghead to Fraserburgh) sightings did not start until about the 21st of the month when dolphins were seen at Spey bay - eight animals by the river mouth, and on the same day four dolphins were seen outside Macduff harbour.

January is always a fairly quiet time but this gives me the opportunity to catch upon logging video footage and photo-id and also time to work on new ideas for this year. One thing that I have been involved with is highlighting our concerns over a proposed housing and 500 berth marina development at Whiteness point Nr Nairn. Planning permission has just been applied for and we feel that should this proceed it will put a vast amount of pressure on wildlife in the area, the dolphins more so, with all the added boat traffic in such a sensitive area which is why we have very serious concerns about the future of dolphins, porpoises and seals in the inner Moray Firth. We would therefore appreciate your support over this issue and ask that you write to voice your concern and raise your objections over the impact and possible implications this development will have to:

Mr Mundie
Team Leader / Development Control
Planning & Development
Highland Council
Glenurquart Road
Inverness
1V3 5NX

Now a few words on the sad plight of the northern bottlenose whale that was trapped in the River Thames in London. On the Tuesday prior to this whale appearing in the Thames I had a report of a sighting of two bottlenose whales off Aberdeen, although this was not confirmed it is likely they could have been the same animals - as there were two whales in the Thames estuary - one which then went back out to sea and the other was the younger whale which did not make it. It was encouraging however to see how many of the general public were actively interested in the whales' wellbeing. Hopefully the 20,000+ who stood along the banks of the Thames and the millions who watched via their tv screens will now carry on with the effort to support the effort to protect the thousands of cetaceans which are killed each year, by mans' folly.

It was also a busy few weeks for the Marine Connection office in London - not only had they been involved in the Thames Whale scenario but straight after Liz Sandeman and her colleague Robert paid me a flying visit to discuss our plans for the project here over the coming year.

On the first day of their visit we took to the water and in Cullen Bay were graced with the company of around 18-20 dolphins, bow-riding and breaching westward - what a great advertisement that would have made for a dolphin watching holiday!

In the last week of the month I was at Kemnay giving a talk and video show (and of course the "rescue" of Creagan the dolphin! It was a wonderful evening with a really enthusiastic group of people and we were blessed with some really sunny but frosty weather - the colour of the sky varied from blue to purple in the late afternoon, simply stunning dolphin watching weather. Talking of which, our dolphin watching trips have been so popular that we are now offering dolphin watching weekend breaks, so if you are interested in finding our more about this, drop us an email and we will see if we can get the dolphins to come over and say hello!

Finally, on the 29 January we had around 20 people at Burghead lookout point watching for two hours - no dolphins were sighted only a few seals and sea-birds, but a great time was had by all. As I end this the sky is blue and the sea is as smooth as glass, the frost is heavy on the ground, but it is a perfect day for a dolphin watch ....... maybe I'll just take the opportunity to nip along to Portknockie for some dolphin spotting!

Until next time, all things good

Peter