Moray Firth

As we headed out to sea this morning we were accompanied by a very sobering thought. Yesterday, SNH (Scottish Natural Heritage) issued a new report detailing the fact that Scotland’s seabird numbers have plunged by 19% between 2000 and 2008. The main reason for this appears to be a shortage of food, such as sandeels whose numbers are affected by a rise in sea temperatures. SNH explain that lower fish numbers led to lower numbers of adult birds surviving from one year to the next, and not enough chicks being produced and surviving to replace them. Some worrying statistics included the fact that there are 71% fewer Arctic skuas breeding in Scotland than in the mid 1980s – making our sighting yesterday of 2 individuals all the more pertinent! (We may be here to find out more about the whales and dolphins in the Moray Firth but in addition to recording cetacean encounters we log all seabird sightings too).

Despite this slightly depressing start to the day we were in for an absolute gem of an adventure! The clouds soon parted, the sun beat down from high in the sky (oops….global warming? This is Scotland after all – and suntan lotion was the order of the day) and the water was positively mill-pond-esque, even with a gentle swell.

During the early hours of the morning you could have been forgiven for thinking that we were adrift in a great blue desert (or black desert depending on your line of sight). Quiet seas is an understatement, no cetaceans, no birds and certainly no other vessels – except for the fisheries protection vessel (could it be the same one that we'd been seeing over on the West coast?) that appeared to be patrolling the outer limits of the Moray Firth (more on fishing in the Moray Firth in a later blog!).

However by the time the sun hit its zenith things took a turn for the better and we started logging sighting after sighting. The day brought us 2 minke whales (1 sighting was to bring much joy and huge smiles to several members of the team as it was a very close encounter – no binoculars required – and verification of why they were here!), 4 harbour porpoises, 5 bottlenose dolphins and a couple of grey seals. Even the seabirds weren’t to disappoint and very soon we were clocking up the sightings including several young gannets, a great skua and 2 puffins!

The hydrophone came into its own and we recorded what can only be described as an absolute hive of porpoise activity – again, it just goes to show you what’s out there that you can’t always see with the naked (or “binoculared”) eye!



Before we knew it our survey hours were over and we were steaming back into Buckie harbour, all with red faces (from the sun – as all breaks were taken lying prostrate on the upper deck!), a belly full of ginger-nut biscuits (always a good addition to a day at sea) and excited about what tomorrow was to bring. Weather is looking good so come back this time tomorrow for another update!!

The weather gods were looking down on us this morning and smiling…..time for us to test out the sea-legs again and get back out on the water. With only a few changes to the crew (Kirsty from the centre and Hywel from RSPB) we headed off into the outer Moray Firth following a transect line that took us out to the Beatrice oil platform and back home in a rather large “figure of eight” – a trip that lasted approximately 12 hours. Thankfully the sea-state was constant somewhere between 1 and 2 and the swell was less than half a metre so no fish-feeding today!

The day began fairly uneventfully with few sightings, even of birds, but once we got out into deeper waters things started to pick up and we were soon logging sighting after sighting. Rafting birds were a-plenty, from the compact little kittiwakes to the highly visible gannets, and from the straight-winged fulmars to the everyday run of the mill herring gulls. Even the fairly elusive skuas were out in force and both the “great” and the “arctic” varieties treated us to a fly-by.

Although we only had the occasional sighting of the cryptic harbour porpoises the hydrophone picked up a fair few clicks emitted from these little critters and was reinstating the value of towing this acoustic device behind the boat – you may not see them but it doesn’t mean they’re not there! We had 4 really nice minke whale sightings (well some of us saw them at least - I believe I was at an advantage here as I’ve just spent a month scouring the Minch for them so was “tuned” in) all of them lone individuals sedately looking for what food the Moray Firth had to offer.



The late afternoon brought an unexpected visitor to the boat in the form of an RAF Rescue helicopter! Requesting permission to land, they dropped one of their crew onto the moving fore-deck as part of a practice drill, only to airlift him back up from the aft-deck. The whole event took over half an hour….and although happy to help when it comes to rescue practice (who knows when one may need it) we were wondering whether or not we could ask for reimbursement for lost survey time!! After my month of military spotting in the Minch, this as you can imagine was a rather surreal encounter!



And so a very successful day at sea came to an end and we all ambled back to the cottage in time for a quick dinner, some data downloading and a well deserved sleep! The weather isn’t looking great for tomorrow but we’re holding out for Friday!

Today, the weather was too rough, so we stayed on shore and decided to take the Sealife volunteers to the Wildlife Center. We had just taken a closer look at the exhibition and the new Harbour Garden and - for us – newly re-arranged shop when we met colleague Alice outside on “shore watch” talking to some visitors about the work WDCS does up in Scotland. She had just taken these visitors on a tour of the ice house and left us in charge of the big eyes binoculars when an osprey made its appearance dropping into the water and taking off with a fish in its claws. Brilliant sight! Then Scott said peaking through the big eyes: “I can see a black fin out there!” And he was so right! A small group of about 4 dolphins started to frolic just outside the river mouth to the joy of about 25 school children from an elementary school in Elgin, our Sealife volunteers and all the other visitors at the center!







We followed them with the big eyes all the way through the bay until we lost them in the haze and the waves. Excellent! After a refreshing lunch, Alice took us round the center and into the ice house, impressing the volunteers with whale bones and orca teeth and squeaky dolphin sounds from the sonobuoy in the bay.







On our way back to the cottage I spotted some dolphins just off of Buckpool jumping through the waves. We watched them for about 10 minutes until they had gone and all of us went home with a big grin on our faces! Maybe we will see them tomorrow when we go out?

Day 1 of the survey and the waters of the outer Moray Firth await…! Unfortunately we’re minus our canine researcher as she has yet to find her sea-legs and has thus decided to stay on dry land for the time being, she will however be joining us later in the week and will update you then on her thoughts and findings in the local vicinity that is Portknockie!! (No sheep Kila…sorry!)

With a slight bit of drizzle we arrived at Buckie harbour to board our research vessel the “Gemini Explorer”. A lifeboat in her previous life, she is now carriage for visitors wanting to go out and experience the local wildlife and for the coming weeks, our new home! After the obligatory safety notices we steamed out the harbour and headed north…out into the blue!

Unfortunately however it wasn’t to be the most successful of maiden voyages as within only minutes of leaving the haven of protected waters the ‘feeding of the fish” began!! The 3 metre swell started taking effect and one by one they fell…..leaving only 3 of us standing (my good self, Claire the hardy seal carer and Johnathan the Wildlife Centre volunteer)…..and the other 5 in various positions over the side and praying to Neptune for salvation!! Thank goodness we didn’t make the effort to make a slap-up breakfast – what a waste that would have been!! Our recently retrieved hydrophone decided to throw another spanner in the works and Captain Pine, despite trying every trick in the book (between visits to the head!) wasn’t able to bring it to life – some serious acoustic surgery is on the cards for this evening.

The swell wasn’t abating and the executive decision was made to come “off-effort”, turn the boat around and head for home…much to the relief of the “fish-feeding 5”. We returned to the cottage to back-up what data we had managed to collect, amidst the sickness, and set about planning for the coming days!

Roll on tomorrow….but maybe with the assistance of some sea-sickness pills for the majority of the crew!!

Right, here we are again, up in the Moray Firth for our summer survey for cetaceans. We (Nicola, Laura and I) have help from four staff from the Sealife Centres all around Britain: Adam, Claire, Jenny and Scott and sporadically from the residential Wildlife Center volunteers (Jonathan, Pippa, Kirsty and Dianne) as well as from some RSPB and SNH folk. After a couple of teething problems with our lovely huge cottage in Portknockie (like finding out that the landlord's relative's daughter had held a party in the house the night before we moved in and did a horrible job of cleaning up afterwards and the cleaner having to come round again to do the job today, or that the TalkTalk box that was supposed to connect us to the internet didn't work and Nicola spending most of the day on the phone to the provider and Laura hidden under a jumper in the garden to use her dongle) we eventually settled in quite well.

Today found us waking up to a blue sky covered by white clouds. After a quick breakfast in the garden I trained up the Sealife volunteers and bombarded them with a quiz at the end about the different cetacean, seal and bird species they might encounter while up here afterwards. Then Laura and I set out to collect the equipment from the Wildlife Center in Spey Bay and set everything up on the boat. As we were storing things away and setting dictaphones and watches to the right times and dates, Davy, the skipper of the Gemini Explorer came to us and asked quietly where the hydrophone was. The hydrophone?!? Isn't it supposed to be in the shed here at the harbour? No, they had brought it back to the Wildlife Center at the end of last year. Ok, great. Laura and I set off to hunt for the hydrophone which turned out to be in the shed next to the volunteer house (where the mice live that we encountered on last year's survey when retrieving our equipment). So far so good, back to the boat and resuming to set everything up which took us just about another 3 hours. Home, food, and now sleep as we have decided to give it a go tomorrow!