Marine Connection

A scorcher, that's all you can say about July. The sun shone down, the water was like glass most days and life was grand in the Moray Firth. The summer was at it best last month, in fact so hot and balmy that we were actually complaining about it - unheard of in the far North of Scotland!

For a cetacean watcher it was perfect, getting up at 5am or there abouts to wander along the coastal path watching the sun rise and hopefully see a dolphin or two - or more. The morning is one of the best times of the day to be out experiencing nature here - everything is so quiet, except for the sea birds that seem to cry out every time you get too close to the nesting sites. The smaller birds in the bushes and hedgerows seem to alert their companions that someone is approaching and the Kestrels watch overhead as you pass by - walking each day in this weather was perfect and a grand way to start the day.

During the first two weeks of July the bottlenose dolphins were around most mornings either heading west or towards Cullen. As they were travelling close into shore, with the stillness of the warm air you could clearly hear their characteristic "puff" as they exhale/inhale and at times you could even see the vapour as it rushed out of their blow holes. Group sizes of 10-12 animals was normal however one morning as I walked along the cliff path I was accompanied by 30+ - they were travelling very slowly, some logging on the surface as if they were resting or asleep. That made me reflect on what amazing animals dolphins are - to be able to sleep and still be aware of where we are going and move around - maybe some of you out there have that ability but I know I don't. Other days they were chasing fish; breaching clear out of the waves with the fish being thrown out of the water with ease, tail slapping and side breaching before landing on the surface of the water with a loud crash.

No sign of the harbour porpoise, but as I have said before, usually they shy away when dolphins are around and if you were a small porpoise you probably wouldn't want to be in the same area (maybe we should get the marine mammal UN to sort out their problem.) A few years ago you could count maybe 20+ porpoise milling around Portknockie and Cullen Bay, now you hardly see any and this is a trend that is being shown all around the coast.

During July I went over to Shetland for a few surveys on the Hascosay, a ferryboat belonging to North-Link sailing from Aberdeen to Lerwick. At this time of year its amazing, on our last trip I saw 11 minke whales, 15 harbour porpoise, 79 white-beaked dolphins and 50-60 atlantic white sided dolphins - all very close to the boat. And from the land I was able to see a few harbour porpoise, 2 killer whales and 1 lone otter (I hoped to see more Orca but seeing 2 will do!)

Back in the firth the real stars of the water were the large numbers of minke whales in all my years of watching cetaceans here this year has been the best for minke by far. They normally come in to the Firth around August but this year we have had sightings from as early as May. East of Banff as many as 25 have been recorded together and up at Cromarty 12 whales were seen off the Sutors with Burghead and Cullen Bay also having some great sightings.

It was as if all the whales have come round from the west to the east coast. With all these sightings the media went mad; with TV crews, radio and newspapers all highlighting the situation. My phone never stopped ringing with people wanting to come up and see the whales, which is all good stuff I guess for this area. Although I have heard rumours that, if the trend continues, a group of scientists want to take skin samples from the whales using cross bows - something we certainly would not agree with, so hopefully they can just keep to using cameras to carry out ID work.

Over the month each week I have been travelling around with the Marine Connection awareness stand - from Inverness to Macduff. It is gala time here and with such excellent weather we had no need to worry about the rain (for a change!), so it was great to take the opportunity to talk about what we do here and hopefully get people involved with watching and recording any sightings they have.

Dolphin sightings sort of crashed the third and fourth week of the month (they were obviously away visiting somewhere else) - the inner Moray Firth and Dundee were good spots. Who knows why they weren't around here? Food was in abundance but so were the whales, maybe the dolphins react to the whales being in the area much the same as the porpoise react to the dolphins?

So here we are in August with shorter but I am sure great days ahead. I am taking a few days off camping on the West coast in search of some common dolphins and to try to state my case to the midges for note being eaten alive - but I'm not sure how that will go.