Northern Bottlenose Whales, Firth of Clyde

There has a been a group of three northern bottlenose whales in the Firth of Clyde since about mid August but they only get reported intermittently and have been pretty far ranging, initially reported for a few days from near Lochgilphead, then from Great Cumbrae island near Largs and finally a week or so ago from Arrochar. I drove through the first and the last of these places on my way to Mull of Kintyre last Sunday, and then passed through them again today on my way home. I did keep stopping at various places for a scan of the lochs hoping to spot them, but I always seemed to be a week or so behind the whales and had no great expectation of seeing them today.

However, I'd just gone about a mile past the turning for Garelochhead at the southern end of Loch Lomond when I got a message that the whales were now in Gare Loch, just 10 miles from where I was. At the next roundabout I made a U-turn and headed back. A great decision as it turned out, because the whales showed very well swimming in amongst the boats and yachts.

I think that the animal on the left is an adult male due to its pale colouration, whereas the two on the right I think are females or young males because they are a bit darker and I would expect their foreheads to be a bit more bulbous if they were older males. Perhaps because they have a look of bottlenose dolphins they give the impression of being smaller than a typical whale, yet at 7.5 - 9m long they are at least the same size as minke whale and some individuals are even larger and heavier.

This and the next photo are screen grabs from the video below of the male. In order to appreciate how bulbous the head is you need to watch the video.

On both of these videos you can see that the blow near the start of the video is forward which is typical of the species.

According to Cardwardine (2020) northern bottlenose whales feed on the seabed and routinely dive to 1000m, though they have been recorded diving over twice that depth and they can be underwater for around 40 minutes. They usually feed on deep sea squid but occasionally fish and more rarely starfish, prawns and sea cucumbers. 

It's obviously a concern that such deep sea whales should be in a relatively shallow sea loch. From what I can see from the Firth of Clyde admiralty chart, the depth at Gare Loch is around 30m and even the deepest parts of the Firth are little more than 160m, so squid are presumably off the menu, yet from what I saw and according to other accounts I have read, there's no obvious signs that they're not in good health or that they're in any kind of distress. 

All of the lochs they have been in so far, Loch Fynne, Loch Long and Gare Loch are orientated north. The mystery for me is, when they left Lochgilphead they had to head south to get out and eventually they arrived at the relatively deeper and open waters around Arran. At that point why didn't they continue south into the open sea beyond Arran? Instead they turned north again and headed up the narrower and shallower waters of Loch Long, before again turning around and heading south, and then north again up Gare Loch. Hopefully they'll navigate their way out, it's not really a complicated maze, all they have to do is keep heading south and keep heading for deeper water.

One positive from events such as this is that it brings these magnificent animals within the reach of the general public. It was great to see so many young children out with their parents today, and great to hear them shouting excitedly each time the whales surfaced. At one point the whales were between the group in the photo and the nearest yacht. How many of these children have had opportunity to watch whales before, especially at such close range, and how many will be inspired to help conserve dolphins and whales in the future? Too many children these days seem remote from even basic wildlife experiences, let alone a pod of whales. The whales don't seem to be at any immediate risk of stranding so I suppose as long as they can feed then they're not in too much trouble and if they do ultimately get out unharmed then perhaps we can view this as a positive event.

I've done pretty well for cetaceans over the past few years, mainly as a result of my trips the Australia and New Zealand, but I have also seen a few decent cetaceans in the UK, including orca and now these whales. These where the sixth species of whale I have seen worldwide, the others being blue, fin, sperm, humpback, and southern right whales, and obviously not including orca which are dolphins.