2017 Sightings in Scotland
Update by Emma Steel
It has been an extremely exciting couple of weeks for cetacean sightings here in Scotland, with a few less common species popping in to say hello, and a total of 12 cetacean species recorded in 2017 so far! The Shorewatch team spent a week up in Caithness and had some fantastic sightings of Orca. These individuals are members of the Icelandic orca population, who travel down to Scotland in May every year. This year they were spotted as far south as Peterhead!
It has been minke madness across the coastline, with sightings in the Moray Firth of whales breaching, and on a few occasions lots of these baleen whales were spotted from Tiumpan head in the Outer Hebrides. One of our volunteers, Janet Marshall, also sighted a pygmy sperm whale from Tiumpan, a very rare and exciting sighting for her! Not a lot is known about this species, and most information has come from strandings data.
