Our Small Boat surveys started with Andy Rickard aboard The Cartlett Lady but the birth of a child (Fin) and the ensuing work and family commitments meant that Andrew could no longer accommodate us. Instead he passed us on to Nick o’ Sullivan, Skipper of the “Celtic Wildcat” a similar size vessel to the Cartlett Lady, but a catamaran.
For some strange reason the general consensus was that The Irish Sea did not host big blubber, such as Fin Whales. It was just too small a back water in comparison to the wide-open expanses of the Atlantic beyond, seemed to be the theory..
.Photographer Janet Baxter got a picture of a whale off the Smalls Lighthouse from one of the tripper boats.
The photograph was circulated among several cetacean enthusiasts/experts and most plumped for Minke, a couple plumped for Sei Whale! A bit bigger than Minke, not quite as big as a Fin Whale, Given that Sei tend to be in warmer waters and are relatively rare not really that likely.
The photograph was circulated among several cetacean enthusiasts/experts and most plumped for Minke, a couple plumped for Sei Whale! A bit bigger than Minke, not quite as big as a Fin Whale, Given that Sei tend to be in warmer waters and are relatively rare not really that likely.
By comparison with nearby Manx Shearwaters, it looked to me to be at least 20 metres long. These were early days in my cetacean watching, I had seen Fin Whales at distance in Biscay and this looked like a Fin, but who was I to contradict the experts?
We had gone out with Nick on the Wildcat with a glowering sky and a bit of a breeze. We headed North West out of the Milford Haven, our survey team on the front searching for dolphins in the grey foreboding waters. We had a BBC researcher aboard along with a few Sea Trust regulars. We had regaled him with stories of super-pods of Common Dolphins, but as we motored on and on, the sea proved as barren as it looked. After an hour or two our eyes were on stalks and confidence low!
And then it began to rain! soon we were all squashed into the Wildcats cabin, something of a tight squeeze for a dozen people. The sea had worked itself up to being in Nick’s words” "A bit sloshy”, not big, but big enough to have the Celtic Wildcat tossing about a bit. It was also becoming uncomfortably warm in the cabin, and the combination of all the above, caused our BBC man to suddenly exit the cabin. As I looked around, I wondered who would be next, far from confident it would not be me!
A few moments later our BBC man opened the door and shouted “A BLOW!!! I have just seen a BLOW!!!. I nearly flattened him in my rush to get out, while ripping my video camera from its case. Everyone else crowded out and then we saw a big blow as a whale surfaced about fifty yards away! I was concentrating on the eyepiece of the video camera trying to film the whale. “SEI WHALE !!!” someone shouted and others joined in,
“Sei whale” and then the small but clear voice of Stevo rang out, “surely that’s a Fin Whale” …
And it was a Fin, and there were more, we were awestruck! For a little while, we seemed to be surrounded by two or three of these enormous rorqual’s and then we saw a trawler bearing down on us. It just kept on coming and Nick had to swerve and gun the engines to get clear of it. We stopped a few moments later as the trawler continued on its course, seemingly oblivious to us or the whales. The Whales, where were the Whales, where had they gone? Not a sign of them no blows, nothing! They had disappeared, swallowed up in that grey foam flecked vastness that the Irish Sea had become over the past few hours!
It was time to turn around and head back to Neyland. I spent the next couple of hours stood in the rain above one of the hulls searching for the whales or some dolphins, getting soaked. Wet and cold on the outside but warm and cushty on the inside knowing that inside my camera was the proof that Fin Whales could turn up in the Irish Sea!
Whale pic's from *Celtic Wildcat": Rich Crossen