A Field Notebook: Whale watching in the Minch

When I made plans to visit northern Scotland in the middle of August, my main hope was that I would see a few whales and dolphins because late summer is a peak time for seeing them. It was always going to be a longshot because as somebody said, "there's a whole lot of nothing out there" and I expected long periods of seeing nothing except the sea, but my attitude is if you don't try you don't see so get out there and give it a go. I certainly won't see them sat at home.

There are three requirements when it comes to seeing cetaceans. Firstly you need to go to the right places, secondly you need to go at the correct time of year and finally you need a huge slice of luck. With this in mind, today was always going to be the big day, a trip out into the Minch with Hebridean Whale Cruises from Gairloch. It was the right time of year and if anybody could get me to the right places it was these guys. Now I just needed the luck.

Just getting on the trip was a mammoth achievement because the bookings go so fast, especially this year when due to Covid restrictions they have been running less trips. For three weeks prior to the bookings becoming available online I had checked five or six times a day, morning, noon and night, it was almost an obsession, hoping to be able to book for today, the 17th August and the only day I could really make this week without disrupting my entire holiday. Finally, just after midnight last Thursday, the dates appeared and at 5:30am the same day I booked my place. Less than 12 hours later the trip was sold out.

I've been on plenty of whale watching trips in the past, especially off Australia and New Zealand, but it was obvious right from the start that this was going to be a trip unlike any other that I have been on. All of the other trips allow you to wander freely around on a largish boat in your own clothing, often with small children wandering around and the Australian trips in particular provide you with a cup of tea and a slice of cake, all very civilised. Not this one. First we had to don full waterproof gear as provided by the company, thick padded stuff to keep you warm as well as dry, and over that we had to put on a life jacket.

Then there was the seating arrangements. There was only space for 12 people to sit and on our trip we only had 10 to allow a bit more space between us, though I really don't think that Covid could have survived this trip! They weren't normal seats, it was more like sitting on a horse with the seat between your legs with a small hand rail on the back of the seat in front for you to hold onto. There would be no wandering around on this boat, no toilets and certainly no tea and cake or small children. This boat was built for speed.

It was a four and a half hour trip covering a large area of the Minch, the sea between mainland Scotland and the Outer Hebrides. Our route took us from Gairloch to the north end of Skye, then up to the Shiant Islands off Lewis and a little further north beyond that, before turning and heading back to Gairloch. Fortunately I remembered to plot the route on an app on my phone and we covered about 72 miles in total.

Wildlife in the oceans tends to be concentrated around food sources and so large parts of the trip involved moving at high speed, bouncing over waves with spray crashing over the boat as we made our way to and from favoured feeding grounds. On the way back especially we must have endured a full 45 minutes of this, every 30 seconds spray covered the boat, it was like taking a never ending shower with all of your clothes on and it was relentless. Relentless, wonderful and exhilarating, with breathtaking scenery as we made our way past the islands. It was worth the money for the journey back alone, real high octane stuff, the kind of thing that some people pay good money for minus the whales and dolphins!

The whole trip was just a wonderful experience from start to finish. When we arrived back at the harbour I could barely walk when I got off the boat!

Minke whale probably juvenile.

We saw at least two minke whales, an adult and a juvenile. The animal at the top of the post is the adult. Juveniles don't accompany their parents and these two probably aren't related, they've just been brought together by a convenient food supply. We watched them feeding in amongst the gannets for a good 30 minutes, occasionally lunge feeding. The juvenile surfaced right by the boat on one occasion, so close I could hear it's blow. What an experience.

However, probably the highlight of the trip was this awesome basking shark off the Isle of Lewis just north of the Shiant Islands. An amazing animal, the second largest fish in the world, they grow to 10m which is about the same size as a Minke whale! This is apparently a particularly large individual. My first basking shark.

The large rounded fin on the right of this photo is the dorsal fin, the small pointed fin is the sharks tail.

Who can resist a selfie with a basking shark?

We also had a pod of common dolphins around the boat for a few minutes. They spotted us in the distance and we watched as they swam over at speed and then swam alongside us for a bit before getting bored and heading off.

I was a little disappointed at the low numbers of seabirds on the sea, however we did see several storm petrels, but where were all of the shearwaters? We didn't even see a Manxie let alone the hoped for sooty.