The following blog post was originally written for ORCA and posted on https://www.orca.org.uk/. This post is written by me and my colleagues Alex, Emily, and Eilidh.
Since 2009, guests sailing on DFDS’ King Seaways have been able to join ORCA Ocean Conservationists looking out for whales and dolphins. From early March to early October, guests can head out on deck to spot some of the wonderful animals that call the North Sea home, and learn about the work that ORCA does to protect them. This year guest could also join Ocean Conservationists onboard Princess seaways for the first time. Princess Seaways is the sister ship to King seaways and sails on the same route. Which meant double the effort in data collection on the North Sea, and raising even more awareness on ORCA’s important monitoring work.
Like previous years, passengers could find the OCs on King Seaways on the forward facing observation deck. Princess Seaways, unfortunately, doesn’t have an observation deck, therefore the observations happened from the side of the ship. Passengers on King could find more information and relax in the newly refurbished Wildlife Centre. Where passengers on Princess could find more information about the wonderful wildlife in the North Sea in the Wildlife Nook. In the Wildlife centre/nook, presentations, quizzes and kids activities have taken place throughout the season. As the season comes to a close, we ,this year’s North Sea Ocean Conservationists, reflect on our time on board and share some of our highlights from the season. This year we were a team of four Ocean Conservationists in the North Sea; Alex and Mathilde on King Seaways and Emily and Eilidh on Princess Seaways. From our respective ships throughout the season we have seen plenty of cetaceans!
There are four main species in the North Sea; The shy harbour porpoise, the brilliant white-beaked dolphins, the acrobatic bottlenose dolphins and the sneaky minke whales.
Our experiences of the 2024 North Sea season:
Mathilde
This is my third year on this route, for me this season, the White-beaked dolphins definitely stole the show. On King Seaways alone we have seen more white beaked dolphins than in the 2022 and 2023 seasons combined! Although the reason for this increase is currently unknown, we do know that white-beaked dolphins use the UK coastline as nursery grounds, specifically around the North East of England. This year, many mother-calf pairs were seen, all off the UK coastline close to the port of Tyne but also off the Yorkshire coastline - showing the importance of ORCA’s monitoring work.
You truly never know where and when these wonderful animals show up. That is the answer to one of the most frequently asked questions; what is the best time to spot cetaceans along this route? It’s safe to say, there is no best time! The answer is literally from sunrise until sunset! On the Dutch side of the North Sea you have a good chance of harbour porpoises, and the occasional dolphins or maybe even a Humpback whale. Unfortunately we haven’t seen any humpbacks on the Dutch side this year, even though throughout the summer they have been seen in Dutch waters! What we can say is that there is a better chance of spotting whales and dolphins on the UK side of the North Sea, this is probably because it is a bit quieter along the UK coastline. Most main shipping lanes in the North Sea are on the eastern side of the North Sea, on this ferry route we cross quite a few of these shipping lanes. The North Sea is known to be one of the busiest seas on the planet. For example, on average around 250.000 ships sail through the Dutch part of the North Sea alone. Ship strike is one of the biggest threats to cetaceans, which is why it is so important to continue to monitor these areas like the North Sea.
Throughout the season I’ve had plenty of interesting conversations with many passengers, and helped many people to spot their first ever cetaceans. One of these passengers was a teenage girl from Germany, who whilst on holiday in Scotland, had hoped to spot whales, to no avail; so this crossing was her last chance. We were treated to some porpoises, until her mother urged her that it really was dinner time, reluctantly she left the observation deck. Me and a few other guests really hoped that we wouldn’t see anything whilst she was away. A minke whale had other plans. Mere minutes after the girl had left the deck we saw a minke whale. The passengers and I decided it would be best to not tell her that a minke had appeared so soon after she had left the observation deck. We saw some more porpoises whilst the girl was at dinner.
However, when she came back from dinner, something magical happened, again only mere minutes passed and another minke surfaced! She was over the moon with her first ever whale sighting! All of us on deck were incredibly happy and glad that another minke whale had popped up! We ended up daring to tell her about the earlier minke sighting.
We continued the observation until sunset and managed to see another handful of minke whales! It ended up being an absolutely amazing evening of cetacean watching in the amazing North Sea!
Eilidh
I have to agree with Mathilde that the white-beaked dolphins have blown me away this year! They are my new favourite. It’s worth mentioning that there are very few places around the UK where you can regularly spot white-beaked dolphins, so we are pretty lucky to pass through one of their key habitats during the ferry crossing. In fact, if you’ve had a look at ORCA’s latest State of Cetaceans report, you would know that in 2023 we noticed a decline in the number of white-beaked dolphins sighted in the Hebrides. This may be due to the increased number of common dolphins on the West coast of Scotland, which has potentially increased competition for prey and other resources. However, as Mathilde mentioned, it's been a great summer for spotting white-beaked dolphins in the North Sea!
Another highlight for me was all the wonderful and thoughtful questions from the children travelling on Princess. One sticks out in particular: during the presentation, a very astute boy raised his hand and asked, “So if a fish eats some plastic in the sea and then a whale eats the fish, surely the plastic ends up in the whale too?” He was correct, and had given a perfect example of one of the many issues cetaceans are facing: namely bio-accumulation. Unfortunately, marine mammals are generally top predators, therefore anything harmful their prey have ingested, they will ingest too.
It’s great to meet so many curious and very knowledgeable wildlife enthusiasts!
Alex
I'm deviating away from the crowd with this one and I've got to say, the minke whales were my absolute favourite this season. With it being my first year working for ORCA, I had no idea what to expect and I was beyond thrilled with the amount of sightings I had during my time onboard. Thankfully, I was lucky enough to be surveying during the elusive 'Minke Season', this year starting in late August and going through to mid-September. During that time I saw over 100 minke whales, and I honestly had the same level of excitement for each and every one of them - think kid in a candy shop level of excitement. This was made even better when I had packed observation decks and lots of people seeing these beautiful animals alongside me, for some passengers it would be the first time they had ever seen a whale and it's truly a privilege to be able to experience that with them.
A particular stand-out evening for me was my first day back on ship, on the 26th August, and as it was a rotation change day, both myself and Mathilde were onboard. This turned out to be incredibly useful, as during the course of the evening we witnessed 15 minke whales popping up around the ship over a 2 hour period, which was truly breathtaking. During this same evening we also saw over 42 grey seals and 29 Harbour porpoises and 4 white-beaked dolphins. Safe to say, it's a night I certainly won't forget for a while!
Additionally, I had several fleeting encounters with one of the less common species in this route - ironically the short beaked common dolphin. A pod of 4 of this species was seen all the way back in May, only surfacing a few times, but a bigger pod of 14 individuals was seen in late August, keeping pace with the ship for a few minutes! It was severely heavy rain that evening, so these dolphins were seen from the inside wildlife centre on King Seaways and luckily there were many passengers that also got a quick glimpse of these dolphins by rushing to the windows! With a very distinctive yellow and white hourglass pattern, these dolphins were a lovely treat to be able to see on this route, our jokingly 'uncommon' dolphins.
Emily
I have to agree with Alex on this one and for me, the minke whales stole the show. With this being my first season working for ORCA I also did not know the extent of how common sightings in the North Sea were going to be! I was fortunate to start working right in the middle of minke season, and within the first hour of my first deck watch we saw our first minke and I was blown away. For my first two days on board, we had absolutely gorgeous weather and flat calm seas and were lucky enough to spot all four of the most commonly sighted species in the North Sea; the harbour porpoise, white-beaked dolphins, bottlenose dolphins and minke whales - an amazing introduction into working for ORCA. These incredible sightings continued to amaze me throughout the season.
A particular highlight from the minke whales this season was witnessing them breach! I have seen minkes before around Scotland, but I have never seen them breach. Throughout the season I was lucky enough to see whales breach on three different occasions. It has to be mentioned that for each encounter we had fairly rough sea conditions - too rough that no other species were sighted throughout those particular crossing. The exact reason why cetaceans breach is unknown; maybe as a courting behaviour, maybe to remove parasites from their bodies, maybe as a form of communication, or maybe just for fun? This breaching behaviour I witnessed is most likely to be as a form of communication when surface conditions were rougher and therefore louder than usual.
A privilege of working for ORCA is to be able to share my love, passion and knowledge of the ocean and cetaceans with others, and what comes along with that is the pleasure of being able to experience and witness the enthusiasm and excitement towards whales and dolphins from other passengers. Again with this being my first season, I was unsure how much public engagement would come with the job, but I was more than pleasantly surprised with how curious, keen and enthusiastic the passengers were. A memorable encounter for me was with a young girl from the Netherlands who was desperate to see a dolphin. She stayed out with me on deck for hours in the evening, unfortunately without a single sighting. She was back out first thing again in the morning, two hours went by still without any sightings. To my relief as we sailed into the piers at North Shields, out popped a pod of 10 playful bottlenose dolphins. She was absolutely over the moon, and for me, it was an absolute pleasure to be able to experience her first dolphin sighting with her!
It's been another truly amazing season in the North Sea. A big thank you to our friends at DFDS for continuing to support our vital work and to all the crew on board King Seaways and Princess Seaways for sharing our love of whales and dolphins.
And of course, thank you to all the guests for meeting us on the North Sea and helping us spot all these amazing animals and making this a fin-tastic season!
Alex, Emily, Eilidh & Mathilde
All photos in this blog are taken whilst working as Ocean Conservationists for ORCA and are therefor ORCA's photos. This version of the blog post is our original version.
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