When you see the blow from a big whale, you know it!

Outdoors columnist Daniel Brooks is a wildlife guide, adventure seeker, conservation campaigner, forager, bushcrafter, rewilder and father for who Cetacean watching - searching for, finding and observing whales dolphins and porpoises - is his favourite pastime these days.

 

After a successful day wildlife watching with visitors, I set off for the north end of Mull to do some sea watching on my own in near perfect calm conditions.

 

"attachment_568109" "" "214"] Mullman Daniel Brooks is The Oban Times' outdoors columnist.

 

On the first sweep with my telescope, I spotted a huge blow near the Cairns of Coll. To see any significant blow is always exciting. It is likely to be something a bit rarer and larger. Our local and relatively common minke whales rarely show a visible blow. It depends on atmospheric conditions and behaviour, but even when they do blow, it is not much to see, a few metres high at most and low volume.

 

When you see the blow from a big whale, you know it! The blow I had just seen was huge, perhaps 10m tall and created a cloud over the sea.

 

From the tall thin shape of the mist from the blow and the huge long low back and lack of tail lob, I knew this was no humpback, which is a slightly more common sight in our waters. Other whales, presumably minke, were also surfacing around it. Dolphins were leaping and splashing in among the feeding frenzy too. Although they were most likely to be commons, they were too far away to know for sure.

 

PFFFFFFF!!!! Although it was too far away for me to hear, I did not have to imagine the wonderful sound of this huge blow being blown as I have had one other encounter with a mother and juvenile fin whale in exactly the same location up close as a guide for Sea Life Surveys 17 years ago. That was a most wonderful encounter that I may write about one day - if I ever run out of new stories.

 

During this second and third surface, I could make out the tell-tale shape of the fin whale dorsal - lower, less sickle shaped, flatter and more directly backward pointing. I have little experience personally of this species but I have studied, in great detail, virtually all the whale videos on Youtube and beyond to help make future sightings such as this easier to identify. It paid off.

 

As I scanned the rest of my surroundings, I could see other minke whales feeding on little fish alongside little gatherings of birds. At least four other minke were feeding between myself and Ardnamurchan.

 

One of them was lunge feeding below me, bursting up out of the water mouth agape as it tried to get as many of these small fish in one gulp as it could.

 

And there were common dolphins everywhere. They were mostly in small scattered groups, two here, eight there, but there was also a large pod, maybe 50 of them, hunting the north east shore of Coll, making loads of splashing as they chased a shoal of fish.

 

I had called Ewan Miles from Nature Scotland to tell him about the fin whale. He lives 20 minutes away in Dervaig and turned up half an hour later. We both saw distant blows, but nothing positively identifiable as the fin whale. It could have been minke blows or from a number of other species.

 

We had another great hour together, spotting minke and dolphins, marvelling at the flocks of starlings going to roost and generally soaking up the peace and beauty of this impressive sea vista on a perfect evening.

 

This kind of experience is a reward for me. A reward for all the hours of effort put in and what I love so much about wildlife watching. Watch long enough and you are rewarded with these often once in a lifetime experiences that stay with you forever.

 

 

Caption: Fin whale with dolphins feeding on their scraps.

 

Photograph: Daniel Brooks

 

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