Whales July 2026

12 Jul

Written By me 2

Back to Biscay on the Ferry. Its a good year for Cuvier’s Beaked whales, we saw 30, more than in the whole of my three trips last year.

Cuvier’s Beaked Whale Breaching right in front of us in the Bay of Biscay :)

Harbour Seals in Plymouth Harbour as we left on Wednesday 8th July

Manx Shearwaters English Channel

As usual some Gannets flew Along with the ship which meant you could get a really close picture

A Fulmar English Channel. They were sitting on the water - too hot to fly much?

Common Dolphins English Channel

Wwe started seeing them with Gannets looking in our wake

Gannet and Dolphin feeding frenzy - we saw this a few times.

THe Gannets form a circle to dive into the water

They dive a few metres but can then swim down to 30 metres

Dolphins were in and around the Gannets

Everyone was after these fish.

They can get quite close to each other whilst diving!

At Sunset we saw a massive flock of Gannets into the sunset - very beautiful

There was quite a big spot on hte sun (Mirrorless Cameras only to take this pic!)

Sails in the sunset

One of many lighthouses at Finisterre in Brittany 8th July sunset

THe Pinked dawn, 30 minutes before sunup 9th July

Biscay gives a good sunrise. We were around the middle at this stage

My earliest ever sighting - a Cuviers Beaked Whale at 5.19am

Later another Cuviers

This one breached!

Very close to us. I had tingles for a few minutes afterwards

Came down splosh!

We saw a few mixed pods of common and Striped Dolphins. The Commons liked to come into the side of the ships

This a 'flukeprint' of one of the Common Dolphins

THe Striped Dolphins stayed further out and often went for our wake

They are great jumpers!

Beautiful Patterns

These two may have been a couple - they jumped a few times together

In Santander the Colourful bear of a Spanish artist was visiting promoting diversity

Black Kite with lunch in Santander

I didn't get off but stayed to watch the birds and rest up

Sparrow clean up hopping onboard

Cleaning up flies :)

Coming back from Santander some young Risso's Dolphins

Never seen this stripe before on a Risso.

Two round of Fin Whales on Thursday Evening

This blow was very late and it was dark difficult to see

Earlier I got a roll sequence for one of the Fins

We estimated 5 fins in all that evening

Friday 10th before dawn - Gannet and the Moon

Sunup Friday off Finisterre. The atmosphere does funny things to the rising and setting sun :)

Lots of Gannets again as we came back into the English Channel

The Seagulls follow the trawler - well, they mostly sit on it in this case

One more encounter with common Dolphins before Plymouth

I'll end wiht a few sunset and sunrise pictures :)

Many thanks to ORCA team for organising over 80 guests like me and making sure we got a good chance to see these magnificent animals and birds :)

me 2

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