It’s not often that our teams of Marine Mammal Surveyors return from their surveys from Newhaven to Dieppe with multiple pages of sightings forms completed - but that is exactly what happened to the lucky team servicing the route this week!
Team Leader Stuart shares the teams experience in this weeks blog:
Our survey team met at Newhaven Ferry Terminal on the morning of the 17th April and I conducted a quick briefing for the team before we boarded the ship. My briefing came with the caveat that we might see something, we might see nothing…little did we know at this point how busy our survey would be!
As we began our survey on the bridge of the DFDS Seven Sisters, we had a calm sea state and a hopeful forecast. Hilary, on her first ORCA ferry survey, called our first sighting, a bottlenose dolphin. This was quickly followed by more sightings, all of which were harbour porpoise. Their small triangular dorsal fins were quite easily visible in the calm seas.
By the time we reached Dieppe we were very happy with the number of sightings recorded so far but we all had a feeling that the return leg would be just as eventful - we were wrong; it was even more eventful! A near perfect sea state for the entire four hour return leg to Newhaven saw us completing more and more entries on our sightings data sheet, all of which (apart from one seal) were harbour porpoise. Most of these sightings were pairs, but we did record one group of three individuals, we were excited to record that this group included a calf.
These relatively small and shy cetaceans are quite common in coastal waters but are more difficult to spot in rougher sea conditions. All of the harbour porpoise we saw were quietly going about their business, sometimes associated with feeding sea birds. Due to their fast metabolic rate they need to feed frequently and they generally avoid ships, although we did have some closer encounters.
As the sun set we recorded our 19th sighting of the survey, the perfect end to a memorable day. We finished our survey, thanked the bridge crew and disembarked the ship with an impressive sightings list to add to ORCA’s database.
Some survey days just deliver and delight!