Sightings Index
- Community Sightings Network
- Watching Cetaceans
- Report a Sighting Online
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- April 2017
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Monthly Sightings Reports
HWDT’s Community Sightings Network encourages residents, local wildlife operators and visitors to the area to report their sightings of whales, dolphins and porpoises to HWDT. This information is important because it contributes to our understanding of where and when particular species occur. Report your sighting HERE.
Each month HWDT publishes a summary report of the sightings recorded via our Community Sightings Network. In summer we receive the greatest number of sightings while winter is a quiet time. This is partly due to the number of species present but also reflects the sea state and number of people on the water watching for whales, dolphins and porpoises. In winter, fewer people are watching and the sea state more frequently makes sightings difficult, or even impossible. Also non-resident species have migrated for the winter. At this time of year HWDT receives more strandings reports than at other time as storms can wash animals ashore. These seasonal variations will be reflected in our reports.
Select the monthly report you wish to view from the panel on the left of this page.
April 2017
It was a brilliant April for our Community Sightings Network, with 63 sightings of 243 individual whales, dolphins and porpoises!
April was a great month for bottlenose dolphin sightings in particular, with 21 sightings of 148 individuals. This is almost three times as many as were spotted last month! One sighting had a pod of around 25 individuals, with 5-6 juveniles. This is a particularly large pod, as the bottlenose dolphins were more commonly seen in groups of 3-10. We also had an amazing report of 3 bottlenose dolphins, that someone spotted through a webcam all the way from Belgium!
Harbour porpoise sightings stayed pretty steady, with 34 sightings of 73 individuals. A third of these sightings came from ferries, in particular those coming out of Oban in the relatively shallow and sheltered waters. This is a good reminder of how great cetacean spotting from ferries can be, so do keep an eye out on your next trip!
Surfers up on the Isle of Lewis were lucky enough to spot killer whales, with two reports of a pod of three coming in just half an hour apart from Dalmore Beach. With no photos of the dorsal fins or markings we weren’t able to identify these individuals, but it is possible that these were transient killer whales that travel down to Scotland from Iceland and Norway. Much like surfers, many species come to the Hebrides in the summer to make the most of our beautiful and abundant seas.
We had a couple of fantastic sightings from Stoer Head Lighthouse in Assynt. Two minke whales, an adult and calf, were seen feeding in amongst large numbers of gannets. Minke whales ‘lunge’ feed; where they approach schools of fish at high speed, with their mouth open and throat grooves extended. This way they can take ginormous gulps, in one movement, before filtering out the seawater and swallowing the fish. The second great sighting from the lighthouse was two adult Risso’s dolphins with a calf (this point is obscured by the minke point on our sightings map). This was our only sighting of Risso’s in April, and one of 3 minke whale sightings. We are expecting to get more frequent sightings of minkes now that we move into the summer months.
Thank you to everyone for your sightings, please do keep them coming in. Good luck cetacean spotting!
To see a map of the sightings from 1 April to 30 April 2017, click here.