A Field Notebook: Fin, humpback and Minke whales in the Minch

I never thought that any whale watching trip in the UK could match those that I experienced in Australia and New Zealand over the past few years, but todays trip with Hebridean Whale Cruises out of Gairloch with Steve Truluck and Rosie Barrett achieved it. I was absolutely delighted when Steve said at the start that we were going to head for Tiumpan Head on the east coast of Lewis because I knew that there were some big whales in that area, but it was a long journey from Gairloch and some of the smaller stuff had to wait until later as we sped north west for around an hour. It was worth it though....

Finally we arrived off Tiumpan head. There were common dolphins all around us, many leaping out of the water, some so close to the boat that it felt like I could have touched them, and I could see others swimming under the boat. Suddenly right in the middle of them a huge shape appeared on the surface, perhaps 10x longer than the dolphins, a fin whale, the second largest animal ever to exist and it was just 15m in front of us! The dolphins seemed to enjoy its presence and surfed around it! An incredible moment. After a minute or so it arched it's back and dived, revealing it's fin which is set back on this species, about two thirds of the way along its body.

Suddenly a shout went up that there was another fin whale behind us and turning I saw the great arch of a body as a second animal also dived, again with dolphins all around it. For several minutes the whales kept surfacing and diving, and all of the time they had an escort of common dolphins. A truly breathtaking experience.

It's easy to forget when looking at these photos that common dolphins are around 2 - 2.5m in length and in the photo above you can't even see the dorsal fin of the whale because it's below the water. As I said previously, the dorsal fin is set back on fin whale but even so we're only looking at about two thirds of the animal in this photo.

After a few minutes the whale decided to dive and showed us its fin.

Fin whale diving

....and there it was gone. Except that like many whale species it leaves behind a footprint of flat water on the surfaces after it has dived.

Fin whale and surfing common dolphins!

Then we saw a blow of what was probably a humpback, and sure enough it surfaced then arched it's back, drew it's tail out of the water and went under again giving us a great view of its fluke as it disappeared. From the markings just below the dorsal fin Steve identified it as an individual known as Pi (π). We saw it do this several times and also saw another blow which looked like a humpback and which was probably not Pi, so likely two animals. There have been at least two humpbacks off Tiumpan head recently.

If you zoom in on the area around the dorsal fin on Steve's photo of this humpback, you can clearly see the π. You can also see the back of my head, I'm the guy on the right.

Here comes the fluke!

Humpbacks can generally be identified from markings on their flukes and Pi is probably no different, but the obvious pi symbol next to the dorsal fin makes it easier if you can get a good enough view. Unfortunately none of my photos are good enough to show this feature but you can see it in Steve's photo. Pi has previously been seen in Cornwall and off the Isles of Scilly.

The uncropped version of the last photo to show how close the animal was to the boat.

Next we spotted a large splash which at first we thought might have been another large whale but which turned out to be a lung feeding Minke whale. For a moment I saw it's head and baleen plates as it expelled water from a large gulp and then it was gone, before resurfacing again nearby. On any other whale watching trip this would have been the highlight but today it was just one of many.

Our third species of whale of the trip, it was small even by minke standards but after what we had just seen it seemed like a dwarf whale.

Suddenly five Risso's dolphins sped past, easily my best views of the species, I could clearly see the typical scratch marks on their flanks. One of my favourite species.

This is Steve's wonderful photo of one of the Risso's. The scratch marks are amazing.

Risso's dolphins with some nervous looking auks.

It might seem that the common dolphins were just a distraction but actually although individually much smaller than the giants of the whale world, the spectacle was just amazing, they were so acrobatic as they jumped all around us. We estimated about 300 individuals at least.

Common dolphins.

A mother and calf I guess.

Common dolphins.

Common dolphins underwater at the side of the boat.

Finally it was time to go back, yet even now the adventure wasn't over as we recorded another two minke whales and another fin whale, while the views were breathtaking, the sea was flat calm like glass and the light excellent. It even allowed me to capture a few lucky photos of storm petrels, like the one in the photo above and the following two.

Storm petrels with the Old Man of Storr behind. That's Storr not Stoer. This one is on Skye, the Old Man of Stoer is where I went yesterday in Inverpolly.