Tuesday, September 05, 2023
A minke whale breaching to the north of the ferry was the sighting of the day.
But that wasn't until 3.30 pm, on the return journey. In the morning we hadn't gone far from Ullapool before the cry of "Dolphins!" was heard - and the water seemed full of them, leaping their way up the loch. The decks were crowded on this gorgeous day, and I couldn't get near a rail for love nor money. Never mind, there was plenty of time yet.
I roamed about, scanning the sea between people's heads, and nipping eventually into vacated spaces. I had several glimpses of whales among lounging/frenzy-feeding gulls and gannets, and a couple of great skuas flew past at a distance. On the far side of the Minch porpoises were spotted several times, and a flock of Manx shearwaters took off from the water. I had to stand at the top of the steps to snap these before they disappeared behind the lifeboat.
Looked much better in blue.
The Coastguard tug Ievoli Black was in Stornoway harbour - and, horror of horrors, they've painted it red!
Looked much better in blue.
The ferry wasn't quite so full on the return trip, but the upper rails were popular and I stayed on the lower deck. At least there you have a wider view - and, standing at the side rail facing north, I had just been twisting round to scan the wake when I turned back to see an enormous splash right in front of me. A man with a dog next to me had seen it too and alerted other people. I got the camera ready and, luckily for us, the whale breached again - and again.....
I caught seven breaches with the camera. The cropped image at the top of the blog was the penultimate one, and things are already looking murky; while my last picture shows the whale being swallowed up by a haar - under cover of which it could, for all I know, have carried on merrily breaching.
About ten minutes later we came out of the mist and had warm sunshine and blue skies back again.
But the whale of course was long gone.
// posted by Christine @ 2:40 PM 
