A final survey send off by the bottlenose dolphins!!
And just to add to the last posting - what a fabulous way to end the final WDCS outer Moray Firth survey of 2008!!!
It was a still morning when we arrived at Buckie harbour. As we headed offshore, the wind picked up a little and it became a bitterly cold, grey morning. What else would you expect in the middle of November?? It was all worthwhile, and we were all enjoying our last opportunity of the year to get out into the outer Firth and enjoy the very bracing sea air! We were fortunate enough to encounter a number of harbour porpoises, bobbing grey seals and seabirds, including juvenile gannets, guillemots, cormorants, long-tailed and eider ducks in our offshore transect block. We managed to complete two transects before we headed back to the coast to shelter from the wind, swell and increasing sea state. It was then that I saw a rolling movement in front of some rocks just off the coast of Cullen Bay. And then another, and another! Davy reduced our speed and two small groups of bottlenose dolphins came over to investigate us – I’m sure they recognise the sound of the Gemini explorer. They were interested in us but were also busy playing together.
One group was engaging in lots of ‘tumbling’ over each other and another dolphin was tail slapping in the direction of the second group. A young, light grey coloured dolphin stayed close to mum but came over close to the side of the boat. For 15 or 20 minutes we gleefully enjoyed the company of the 12-15 bottlenose dolphins, as there were dolphins blowing and jumping on the port side of the boat. A big male occasionally came past the bow of the Gemini, belly up, and others belly down showing us up close the rake marks that some of the dolphins have on their bodies. We heard them whistling from time to time as we looked down on them from the bow.
Happy, we left them to play alone and continued on our way home, filling our bellies with Pine’s warming and delicious veggie chilli as we went. We had the Countryfile film crew on board with us and the dolphins gave them a real treat. But it wasn’t just the film crew that were smiling from ear to ear when we stepped off the boat in the middle of the afternoon, we were all very cold and tired, but happy!!
Thank you to everyone who made the surveys possible this year, including the crew of the Gemini and all the WDCS staff and volunteers who did such a professional and brilliant job!
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But kudos to the people who did their best to save him.