Common Minke Whale Spotted

[BlowingOldBoots]

On Tuesday evening I was sailing on the Firth of Lorne, just opposite Loch Don when my son spotted a Minke. I have churned a lot of miles on the west coast and never spotted one before, so it was nice to see. At first we just saw the long back and fin far back on the body, then it disappeared below the water. There was a small bit of swirling in the water, the flat, calm, smooth rotating water you can see at any of the big tidal gates or overfall areas, then all of a sudden the whale's mouth rose out the water, about half a body width, rolled over and disappeared back under. The striking feature was how white the underside was and its bristly baleen plates, almost cheekily smiling as it rolled away. It was about 5m long, so just a young one.

Anyway, I recorded the sighting on the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust App, second link down. There were a few other sightings in the same area reported. I have a marine mammal identification chart on the boat so easy to identify. Unfortunately, didn't have a enough time to take a picture. According to the historical sightings map, this is a rare area for the Minke to be spotted in.

https://hwdt.org
https://whaletrack.hwdt.org
https://hwdt.org/minke-whale

Keep a good lookout and if you spot a marine mammal, consider recording its location on HWDT's App. Their long term recordings of sightings contributes to monitoring numbers in Scottish Waters.

[Gardenshed]

Seems like there are more and more sightings in recent years, which is great. HWDT is a great wee organisation and from their app, its amazing how many sightings there are.
Sounds like you had a really great sighting of a Minke. I've seen minke twice, but just the back/fin. Any day that when you see whales/dolphins is a good day

[claymore]

We had one swimming right in front of us as we were getting into Rona - it wasn't helping

[Capncol]

Fantastic and very lucky to see. We had a memorable experience bimbling back to Ardfern on 6th June, 5 separate sightings of minkes between L Sween and Carsaig Bay. Hardly ever see 1 never mind 5.

[stevepick]

Good to hear that. We saw one on several occasions last year just west of the Corryvreckan. One of the times it was so curious, circling the boat, that we hove too and watched it, watching us, for 30 minutes.

Last week sailing up from Gigha just north of Carsaig, we could smell the unmistakeable rank fishy smell of a whale "burp" but never saw it. So good to hear they are about

[claymore]

I wonder if they do fishy farts as well?