What an amazing first three days of surveying we have had! Let me start by introducing my-self. My name is Gena and I am working with Kevin over the summer as a research assistant. During my first two weeks in Gardenstown, despite daily watches from the shore, I had not seen a thing, and I was subsequently beginning to think Kevin had lured me all the way from Australia with false accusations of an abundance of wildlife in the Moray Firth. However, the first night the volunteers arrived we spotted a pod of dolphins from the shore travelling west. “Wow” I thought “There really are dolphins here!” This was a great sign for the following day!
On the first day of surveying we found the pod of bottlenose dolphins we had seen from shore the previous night. It was a difficult group to study, as the animals were very spread out, but we managed to identify 20 individuals including 5 calves. However, we estimated 30+ individuals in the pod.
On the second day we encountered 3 minke whales on our first off-shore survey route. The most extraordinary encounter happened after lunch when a ‘friendly’ minke found us! This particular whale seemed really interested in us, and after a short while of sampling the animal's behaviour, we realised that we were not conducting any sort of focal follow ourselves as the young whale was clearly following US! This turned into a great opportunity to try an attempt at a suction tag attachment. So there was a big rush to get the tagging device set up - absolute mayhem on a small boat with people spotting for the whale, someone trying to drive, someone trying to photograph the animal, AND trying to set up the tagging device and pole as well! We didn’t end up getting close enough in the end, even despite our attempts to speak in whale (Finding Nemo style), which seemed to work in the beginning.
On the third day we started on an inshore dolphin survey route to try to find the same group incompletely recorded earlier in the week. We found them on a zero seastate ocean in Cullen Bay, and witnessed some remarkable social behaviour with the calves being babysat by a young adult whilst their mothers hunted further out to sea. The calves were very confident with us and joined us repeatedly for a ride on the bow of the boat. This time we managed to record everybody in the group and were pleased to see all 6 of our newborn calves from 2009 and survived their first winter in the North Sea.
After lunch, we headed offshore again to look for more minke whales, and not only did we find them, but we also met another very friendly, curious whale. After several close pass by's, we were amazed to witness this magnificent animal put on an amazing display of no less than 6 full breaches right in front of our boat of which we managed to record some fantastic shots. For the rest of the day we were all in awe of the amazing experienced we had shared together.
Stay tuned for another exciting instalment from the CRRU team in the Moray Firth soon...personally, I can't wait for more!!!
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