Sightings

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You can also watch some of our best wildlife videos of a basking shark, minke whale and an encounter with some show-off bottlenose dolphins by clicking here.

Our regular sightings from last year include:

Recent Bird Sightings:

• Gannet (around 2000 pairs last year!)
• Puffin
• Guillemot
• Black guillemot (seemingly more numerous than last year)
• Razorbill
• Shag
• Cormorant
• Fulmar
• Kittiwake
• Oyster catcher
• Black backed gull
• Eider duck
• Long tailed duck (these shy ducks are winter visitors)

Recent Mammal Sightings:

• We often see common and grey seals- particularly around Troup Head and east of Pennan where they gather together and lie on the rocks. They are very curious and sometimes it's hard to know who's watching who!

• The bottlenose dolphins were around last year quite a lot and we had some amazing displays of leaping, backflips and somersaults.

• We always keep an eye out for harbour porpoises, usually seen around Gamrie and Pennan Bay and also around Whitehills. These little cetaceans are hard to spot as they surface quickly but they tend to mill around and sometimes we've seen them quite close up to the boat.

• Minke whales were seen on many of our summer trips last year. It was amazing to see them scattering birds as they lunged through shoals of fish - and get close enough to smell their fishy breath!

Unusual Sightings

• Jellyfish are pretty fascinating and we are used to seeing moon jellyfish and the stingy lion's mane and purple lion's mane jellies - but Ian's discovery of a Crystal jellyfish in Aberdour Bay in 2009 was very unusual - he had to search the internet to identify it. Ian took a few specimens to Macduff Marine Aquarium where they were included in the jellyfish display there for a while.

• On 24th July 2008, Ian and passengers saw a great skua grab an adult gannet by the throat and fly along with it flapping - evenutally the gannet coughed up its fish!

• We caught a quick glimpse of a great shearwater on 24th June 2008. These majestic seabirds are real ocean travellers and rarely seen close to the shore.

• We had a couple of cracking sightings of ocean sunfish in summer 2009 i n Banff Bay and and just off Greensides - very exciting!  Previously only seen by us once in August 07 (Sat 10th, at More Head), these disc-shaped fish are around 2m long and are the heaviest bony fish in the world! They spend time 'sunbathing' at the surface and we spotted this one waving its fin out of the water.

• Another great wildlife encounter in 2009 was with a basking shark in Gamrie Bay. This huge fish was feeding at the sea surface right by the boat -  it was about 4m long - just a tiddler! Basking sharks get to about 11m! We did see a bigger one a couple of days later - it was close in shore and seemed to follow us into our favourite cove at Head of Garness.

• We had our first ever sighting of an otter from Buchaneer in July 2008, near Whitehills. Prior to that we had only seen one on Banff Beach the previous year - it was rambling around the rockpools. Our boat trip had been cancelled that day due to high winds and swell - but we still managed to see some great wildlife!!

• One of the most exciting marine mammal sightings we've ever had was on 9th September 2006. We met a group of 12 or so Risso's dolphins, which we had never seen before - we had to hit the reference books when we got back to identify them! They are bigger than the bottlenose dolphins, with a large, quite straight dorsal fin and a rounded head. We were with them from Tarlair to Gamrie Bay and were treated to some fabulous displays of breaching and tail lobbing - what an experience!