Here she blows!

"YOU never forget the first time you...” I guess we all have different ways we could finish that sentence, but one of the first things that springs to mind with me is “...saw a whale.” It was on one of the annual boat trips that the RSPB charters out of Flamborough Head each autumn to look for the piratical skuas that flock from the north to reive the emigrating terns and the gliding shearwaters that trim the manes of the white horses.

On the way out we had already passed several harbour porpoises, also known as “herring hogs”, which lived up to both names as, looking like little swimming pigs, they huffed as they bounced across the waves, scurrying in the opposite direction to us, back towards the shore.

After we’d gone a couple of miles out, a huge flock of gannets was spotted in the distance and the captain set course to meet it. We approached a scene that I recall as a blur of energy.

Meteor showers of gannets, hundreds of them, crashing into the sea; the backs of the porpoises breaking the water again and again, like the coils of a sea serpent – I counted 20 of them, then 30, no surely there were at least 40 – and arrowing through these, a few dolphins.

Someone shouted out which species of dolphin they thought they were, but all I glimpsed was lightning morph into a dolphin, then vanish beneath the boat.

The RSPB guide on the boat was trying to coax the distracted passengers back on to the birds and, to be fair, there were some great birds to be seen, sooty shearwaters and great skuas, both new ticks for me, and more gannets than I had ever seen. Then into this maelstrom a dark back arched from the depths and continued arching and arched some more.

It was a minke whale, which was joined by a second and, some claimed, a third. Although the smallest of the “great whales”, it didn’t seem to me much smaller than the boat.

Compared to the criss-crossing porpoises and the bolts of dolphins, watching the whales surface was like watching the second hand tick from ten to two across the top of the clock. We just stopped and gaped and forgot to breathe; the RSPB guide gave up on his commentary.

A minke whale

We are lucky, very lucky. These boat trips do not usually see whales and Flamborough Head is generally about as far down the North Sea as these minke whales get. Nevertheless, the North-East coast is a surprisingly good place to watch cetaceans, as whales, dolphins and porpoises are collectively known.

I ONCE spent several minutes puzzling over an odd-shaped “stick” that was floating a few tens of metres off the sea wall at Hartlepool Headland, wondering how on earth it could be moving ever so slowly against the tide. It wasn’t until it dipped under the water that I realised that I was looking at a harbour porpoise, and only when it drifted past a herring gull that was roughly the same size as itself that I realised that it was a baby porpoise.

In actual fact, most days when the sea is calm and the tide is in, you can see a brace of porpoises criss-crossing over the submerged rocks there, no further out than the end of the Heugh Pier. It’s not clear whether more people have taken to watching out to sea, or whether the number of cetaceans in the North Sea has increased a little, but the number of sightings reported for most cetacean species appears to be going up.

In May this year, two pods, totalling around 40 bottlenose dolphins, were seen for several days off Saltburn and Hartlepool Bay and even that most iconic of cetaceans, the humpback whale, has put in several appearances in recent years. Such is the increase in interest that at least one company regularly runs whalewatching trips off the Northumberland coast.

Even so, the North-East has lagged behind other regions in the country in the number of sightings reported to the national cetacean watch, organised by the Sea Watch Foundation. In order to redress this and to get a better picture of what is happening with marine mammals off our coast, the Environmental Records Information Centre, (ERIC) and the whale and dolphin charity, ORCA, last year launched the Big Watch Weekend.

This landmark event not only provided a snapshot of where the whales, dolphins (and seals) were off our coast, but was also a really successful exercise in citizen science as the surveys were carried out by about 69 volunteers who gazed out to sea from 20 sites along the North-East and Yorkshire shore.

Stationed from Berwick to Filey and watching for an average of a couple of hours each, between them they had 123 sightings totalling 282 cetaceans of four different species, the second highest number of reports to Sea Watch of any region.

This year the intention is to increase the coverage, particularly off the Durham and Cleveland coast, which were missed out completely last year.

Binoculars and telescopes are being polished for the weekend of July 26 and 27 and the organisers are looking for more eager citizen scientists who would like to get involved. They are running training sessions in early July so would-be volunteers don’t need any experience of watching whales and dolphins in order to join in, just patience and a bottle of sun lotion.

A white beaked dolphin

So if you want to know what it feels like the first time you see a whale, this might just be your chance.

• People can get involved through the ERIC website. The direct link to the project is ericnortheast.org.uk/news-events/big-watchweekend-2014.html