A NATIONAL survey involving more than a thousand volunteers from all around the British Isles has found that it has been a bumper summer for cetacean sightings in Devon and Cornwall. Twenty years ago, porpoises were scarce during summer in much of the English Channel but that has changed.

Now they are seen at many locations around the Southwest Peninsula with particular favoured haunts including Berry Head in South Devon, Mounts Bay and St Ives in Cornwall, Morte Point, Capstone Point and Lundy Island in North Devon, and Hurlstone Point in Somerset.

The other species regularly seen is the common dolphin, and there were many sightings of groups of up to one hundred at scattered locations from Berry Head around to Lundy Island, especially in West Cornwall.

Risso’s dolphins have a very patchy distribution in Britain, mainly at locations along Atlantic coasts. In the southwest, the species was spotted regularly off Falmouth and in Mounts Bay, Cornwall.

During the Watch period, there was also a rare visitor from warmer waters – a striped dolphin swam into the Camel Estuary at Little Petherick, Cornwall.

A small community of bottlenose dolphins ranges around the Southwest Peninsula. Sightings during the nine day Watch occurred at such disparate locations as Durlston Point in Dorset, Brixham and Torbay in South Devon, and St Ives Bay and Newquay Bay in North Cornwall. Minke whales were also seen in Cornwall during the Watch, with sightings off St Levan and in Mounts Bay, near Penzance.

Organised by the Sea Watch Foundation, Britain’s oldest marine mammal research charity, the survey took place between July 25 and August 2.

The aim of the survey was to obtain a snapshot picture of the status and distribution of some of the 29 species of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) recorded in UK waters.

Systematic watches from both land and sea were undertaken at locations all around UK coasts and inshore waters from Shetland in the north to the Isles of Scilly and Channel Islands in the south. Over just this one-week period, around 600 sightings of 11 different species were reported, and more records are still coming in.

“Residents of the UK can be delighted that the seas around us are so rich in marine wildlife, and heading to our shores to spot whales and dolphins is surely one of the most satisfying wildlife experiences offered anywhere on the planet” says Sea Watch Foundation’s Sightings Officer, Kathy James. “Despite often inclement weather, the National Whale and Dolphin Watch has produced a large crop of sightings and some striking results”, continues Kathy.

This summer has seen a good number of humpback whale sightings all around the UK, with individuals popping up in Liverpool Bay and both ends of the English Channel, as well as off Norfolk, eastern, northern and western Scotland, and southern Ireland too. There was a humpback whale sighting during the watch, in the Mull of Kintyre, SW Scotland.

However, the most extraordinary sighting from this year’s Watch week was the beluga whale filmed off Northern Ireland. Usually an arctic species inhabiting the Barents Sea and waters around Greenland, the beluga whale was spotted over a couple of days just off the shores of County Antrim. It is thought that this may be a consequence of unseasonably low sea temperatures in the north-eastern North Atlantic. This year also saw the addition of the UK’s 29th cetacean species, the bowhead whale. This normally high arctic species was photographed off the Isles of Scilly back in February.

Minkes were the most frequently sighted whale, with reports coming in from Shetland and Orkney down to Arbroath and Whitby on the east coast, across to Cornwall and the Isle of Man with many sightings further north off the west coast of Scotland.

A huge fin whale was reported off Whitby by a survey team from fellow conservation group, Orca. And killer whales were seen on eight occasions in Scotland, from Islay in the Inner Hebrides up to Orkney in the Northern Isles.

Large congregations of short-beaked common dolphins were seen in groups of 25-100 off the west coast of Britain from Cornwall through Pembrokeshire to northern Scotland, and further east in the English Channel a group was spotted off Sark in the Channel Islands.

Bottlenose dolphins were widespread. Besides the main concentrations around the well-known spots of Cardigan Bay, West Wales and the Moray Firth, East Scotland, they were seen regularly in Aberdeenshire and Fife down the east coast to Yorkshire. This extension of the range of the east coast population appears to be a relatively recent phenomenon, but it occurs not only southwards but northwards too, with a sighting off the Caithness coast. Other small groups of bottlenose were seen in the Inner Hebrides and around SW England in Cornwall, Devon and Dorset.

White-beaked dolphins put in a number of appearances in the North Sea, off the coasts of northeast England and southeast Scotland. Risso’s dolphins were patchily but widely distributed along our western seaboard with sightings reported off north Scotland, the Hebrides, Isle of Man, West Wales, and Cornwall. The most unusual dolphin sighting was that of a striped dolphin in a north Cornwall river estuary. Unfortunately the young animal stranded soon after it was spotted.

The one species that observers can expect to see all around the UK is the diminutive harbour porpoise. At just 1.5 metres long, this is our smallest cetacean and indeed was seen around most of the British Isles, from south Devon and Cornwall all the way up the west coast to the Northern Isles of Scotland, and down the east coast as far as Suffolk. Only the southeast corner of England lacked sightings.

Although the snapshot survey of Britain’s cetaceans is over for this year, monitoring of the populations continues and members of the public are urged to get involved throughout the year by reporting their sightings on the Sea Watch Foundation website or by talking to the team about starting dedicated watches from their local patch. Interested parties should visit www.seawatchfoundation.org.uk/become-a-sea-watch-observer/.