Reports
of marine wildlife from all around the British Isles, with pollution incidents
and conservation initiatives as they affect the fauna and flora of the
NE Atlantic Ocean
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November
2012
An
incredibly rare all white Humpback Whale,
Megaptera
novaengliae, spotted by engineer Dan
Fisher off the coast of Norway on a boat trip
to Svalbard in the
Arctic north. He climbed the mast to take some photographs of the white
whale amongst a pod of the normal grey whales. This
rare event has only ever been seen in one adult Humpback
Whale before.
Shale Cliffs at Rope Head
Lake, Purbeck with the baleen whale
(inset) Photograph
by Dom Greves
A
large
baleen
whale was spotted by Ilay
Cooper, (author of Purbeck
Revealed), at Rope
Lake Head,
Purbeck,
Dorset, beneath the vertical shale
cliffs. He discovered the 13.6 metre (44.6 ft) long carcass whilst walking
along the shore at low tide. Its inacessible location
and the position of its head and blowhole made it difficult to identify.
Dorset
Wildlife Trust’s marine conservation officer, Emma
Rance, believed it could be a juvenile
Fin
Whale, Balaenoptera
physalus, which would be a first discovered
on a Dorset shore.
6 September
2012
As
the sun rose above the ocean on the edge of the continental
shelf off south-west Ireland (on the Porcupine
Bight, west of Dursey
Island in County
Cork), the team on the Irish
Whale and Dolphin Group's new marine research
vessel Celtic Mist
were greeted by several Fin Whales,
Balaenoptera
physalus, and
shortly afterwards had the amazing opportunity to witness two Blue
Whales, Balaenoptera
musculus, surface within 500 metres
of the boat. This is only the third discovery of Blue
Whales off Ireland on a week long trip in
which eleven cetacean species were recorded.
2 September
2012
An
extremely unusual of an angling capture of a Long-billed (Atlantic) Spearfish,
Tetrapturus
pfleuger, off a beach known as the Knap,
Barry
Island, south Wales, was the first known
record of this tropical pelagic fish in British seas.
"This
fish was caught around 1 hour 45 minutes after high water, The fish was
very clean an lively an even had a sticky fish stuck to it. It was then
put back alive but wasn't very strong so I got in the sea to help it out.
It the swam off alive, minus the sucker fish which I lost."
A mass
stranding of 26 Long-finned Pilot
Whales, Globicephala melas, was
discovered at the foot of the steep cliffs at Pittenweem
(near Anstruther),
Fife,
east Scotland, at
7.10 am
in the morning. Thirteen of the Pilot Whales
which were already dead and probably only nine of the remaining animals
were likely to survive. The survivors were being attended to by the medics
and volunteers of British
Divers Marine Life Rescue. At mid
morning, reports came in of another 24 Pilot
Whales in the shallows three miles along the
coast at Cellardyke
on the north coast of the outer Firth
of Forth. By the late afternoon
three of the surviving whales
perished, but ten of them swam off strongly into open water on the high
tide,
two of them with help from the human volunteers to join the pod as they
had stranded again.
24
August 2012
An
exceptionally large 7 kg (15 lb 4 oz) European
Lobster, Homarus
gammarus, was found by divers, Mark
Corp and Mark Reed, and donated to the Blue
Reef Aquarium at Portsmouth.
It appears to be the largest and heaviest Lobster
caught off the British coast since 1931.
14
August 2012
An
18 metre long Fin Whale, Balaenoptera
physalus, swam into Baltimore
Harbour,
County
Cork, early in the morning and stayed virtually motionless at
the bottom of the pier all day. Fishermen tried to coax the huge mammal
back into open water without success. As crowds of people arrived to watch,
experts realised that the whale must be ill to behave in such a strange
manner.
Pádraig
Whooley (IWDG) said
"the whale’s behaviour suggested it was very unwell and would almost certainly
die. If this was a healthy whale she could probably reverse out of harbour.
It looks somewhat emaciated, and thrashing throughout the night has caused
some injuries."
The
whale
died in the harbour on 15 August 2012.
13
August 2012
An
unusual
report was received of a tropical Smalltooth Sandtiger
Shark, Odontaspis
ferox*, washed up on the southern
coast the English Channel (la Manche) and found alive on the sandy shore
at Agon-Coutainville
on the Cherbourg
Peninsula (west coast). (So extraordinary
was this report that I did not include it until the identity of the fish
could be verified.) The 2.5 metre long shark,
weighing in excess of 200 kg was pushed back into the sea and was not recovered
for identification.
(*probable
ID only, not verified.)
Discusssion
on the Marine Wildlife of the NE Yahoo Group
24
July 2012
A
large 400 tonne cliff fall
occurred at Burton
Bradstock on the Jurassic
Coast, Dorset; unfortunately killing and burying a young woman walking
underneath. The soft crumbly limestone
cliffs have a predilection for landslides
after periods of heavy rain.
A juvenile
Basking
Shark,
Cetorhinus maximus,
was observed swimming in very shallow water (swimming amongst bathers!)
at the coastal town of De
Panne (Belgium) . It’s length was estimated at around two metres, and
it could be identified through the photographs provided by deputy-chief
lifeguard Filip Jongbloet.
15
July 2012
An
Arctic Rigid Cushion Star, Hippasteria
phrygiana,
was spotted on a dive off the Northumberland
coast
in the proposed Marine
Conservation Zone between Coquet
and St Mary’s. This northern species is
one of only two records off an English coast. It usually inhabits the seas
off Greenland
and all over the northern Atlantic although
it it is present in the seas around the Shetland
Isles and it has been trawled
off St. Abbs further north on the same North
Sea coast. This
cushion
star was around 10 cm across and was recorded
at 20 metres depth on a cobble/pebble seabed.
30
May 2012
A
Silver Dory (=Sailfin
Dory),
Zenopsis
conchifer,
was
caught by Pierro
Le Cheminant from his trawler, Amy
Blue, at the northern end of the Big
Russel to the north of Sark,
in the Channel Islands.
The trawl at the edge of a reef netted this deep water (mesopelagic)
Atlantic Ocean fish which is very rarely caught in British seas. The
fish could be mistaken for John Dory,
Zeus
faber.
29
May 2012
A
pod of five to seven Minke
Whales, Balaenoptera acutorostrata,
were spotted by anglers from their boat off Hastings,
East Sussex. Minke Whales are
a very rare sight off the Sussex coast at any time of the year.
The
encounter lasted 15 minutes and this one minute clip showed three of the
whales.
24
May 2012
This
blenny
was spotted at a depth of 12 metres at Eastern
Kings,
Plymouth. Its body was narrow, not deep like the Tompot,
Parablennius
gattorugine,
about
150 mm long, has head tentacles, as you can see, but lacks noticeable dark
face markings.
23
May 2012
An
exceptionally large Porbeagle
Shark,
Lamna
nasus, was caught on road and line by Wayne
Comben and Graeme Pullen
and released 300 metres off Boscastle,
north Cornwall. It was measured at about 10 ft (3 metres) long with a girth
of about 2 ft (60 cm) which experts think was likely to be a pregnant female
with an estimated weight of 550 lb (250 kg) and this would have
exceeded the previously largest shark caught by an angler in British seas
beating the previous 1993
world angling record for the species of
230 kg. The shark towed the small boat for a mile before it was hauled
alongside. Even if it was possible to land the fish on to the boat, the
Porbeagle
is now a protected species under European
Union (European Commission
on Fisheries) legislation.
New
evidence has emerged of the distances Cardigan Bay’s Bottle-nosed
Dolphins,
Tursiops truncatus, choose
to travel during the winter months. Experts have found at least some of
them head north and like to spend their winter breaks in the seas around
the Isle of Man. Cardigan
Bay Marine Wildlife Centre’s (CBMWC) science
officer Sarah Perry
has been studying photographs taken by Manx conservation groups in Douglas
Bay in January and has managed to identify at least eight of the animals
previously seen off New Quay (SW
Wales).
The
images were taken by the Manx Wildlife Trust marine officer Eleanor
Stone. (Extract)
9
March 2012
A
spectacular
cliff fall occurred between Langdon
Cliffs and South
Foreland Lighthouse on the Kent coast when an area the size of a football
pitch suddenly fell away, sending thousands of tonnes of chalk
crashing 100 metres down on to the shore in an area known as Crab Bay,
part of the white
cliffs of Dover.
January
2012
There
has been an influx of Arctic gulls
seen in the Shetland Islands
and Orkney Islands and
further south off the Scottish mainland and islands and off Ireland and
on English coasts as far south as the English Channel.
Full
Reports
16
January 2012
The
largest ever Atlantic Cod,
Gadus
morhua,
angled in the English Channel weighed 19.8 kg (43 lb 9 oz)
was landed by boat by Chris Proctor
and caught 20 miles off Pevensey
Bay, East Sussex,
The consensus
seems to think it was likely to be a Basking
Shark althought I thought it could be
a Blue Shark, Prionace
glauca.
9 January
2012
A
juvenile 26.4 cm long Loggerhead
Turtle,
Caretta
caretta, was discovered alive on the rocks at along Widemouth
Bay on the north coast of Cornwall. This
young ocean traveller was likely to have been washed in by the recent gales.
Reports are rare in all months of the year, but especially so in the first
months of the year when the sea is too cold for their survival around the
British Isles.
3
January 2012
A
young Kemp's Ridley Turtle,
Lepidochelys
kempii, was discovered on the shore
at Tresilian
Bay, near Llantwit
Major, on the south Wales coast. This was the second of these young
turtles
discovered dead after the gales since
Christmas
2011.
These endangered
turtles breed on the coasts of Mexico and are usually found in the Gulf
of Mexico and were thought to have blown across the Atlantic Ocean.
The turtles are likely to have perished in the cold seas.
Earlier
Report
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