Isle of Skye to Loch Moidart

This morning we were blessed with beautiful sunny weather and a sea state of 0 which gave for amazing sighting conditions. We set out from Loch Harport, heading generally south in the direct of Rum and Eigg with an aim for the day to cover previously un-surveyed water. At around 10.00 an excited shout of “sighting” called from the mast and deck and within minutes we were surrounded by 9 common dolphins bowriding with us.

A quiet period followed where we all enjoyed glorious sunny weather in t-shirts (certainly an unexpected turn of events for us all considering that it’s late September!). As we travelled through the Sound of Rum we spotted first one harbour porpoise, then 2 and then 60! It was almost as if there was a porpoise conference going on in the area as more and more porpoises joined the massing numbers. Along with this mass sighting our total number of porpoises sighted for the day was 99. Pretty spectacular.

Following this, Matt had a further moment of avian excitement when he spotted another rare bird, this time a junior grey phalarope moving into its first winter plumage.

A short while later, with lunch just having been distributed by Tom, a Minke whale was spotted from the deck and then the mast so for the third time today we were “with whales”. As we stood by to monitor the whale a further 3 animals were spotted, they appeared to be circling an underwater bank and feeding. We remained in the area for a while to allow photo ID shots to be taken before turning back on transect.

No sooner were we back on effort than a further shout of “Sighting – Minke” had us back with whales. This time the initial observation was of two animals feeding along side a number of gannets, within a short space of time, further animals were spotted in the area with one whale lunge feeding amongst the birds. There was some excitement amongst the scientists at this point. We remained with this group for around 20 minutes to enable photo ID shots to be taken with the total number of animals feeding in the area being estimated at 6 which is a rare occurrence indeed. This put our total minke sightings for the day at 10. Truly awesome!

As we progressed towards our anchorage for the evening, a large number of dolphin whistle detections were heard on the acoustics, a short while later Kerry spotted some splashes off to the right so we altered course to investigate. This time we found a large number of common dolphins feeding in association with a large group of gannets. The animals were circling and porpoising seemingly aiming to corral a shoal of fish against a rocky bank. For the second time today, a number of dolphins peeled off from the group and associated with the Silurian, bow riding for around 10 minutes before rejoining the rest of the feeding pod. Number of individuals was estimated to be around 50.

We finally made it into our extremely scenic anchorage at around 6.45pm after over 10 hours under way but after a truly amazing day for sightings. A shore party headed off to visit the nearby Castle Tioram before darkness fell, whilst Kerry and Anja prepared some awesome bangers and mash.