How the giants returned to Scotland
As whale sightings in Scots waters soar...
It was a Saturday in January and Adrian Plumb, an amiable ornithologist, was stalking Fife with his camera in pursuit of one of Scotland’s smallest birds, the elusive goldcrest. In the event, at Kinghorn, he got more than he had bargained for, when a great humpback whale surfaced in the Firth of Forth.
For near half an hour it plunged and gambolled to the delight of spectators on the shore – and, almost without meaning to, Mr Plumb photographed the magnificent creature exploding yet again from the sea against the brooding backdrop of Edinburgh Castle.
His stunning snap made most of the papers and it emerged, in fact, that there were three humpback whales resident in the Firth last winter – and that, with sightings increasingly common, the species seems to be prospering in Scotland’s waters.
We are, of course, no stranger to cetaceans. Locals have long appreciated the cheerful dolphins of the Moray Firth. A pod of orcas – killer whales – have a toothy presence in the Minch.
You can see porpoises on most sailings of the Stornoway ferry, dozy sperm whales were glimpsed off Lewis last year and, in the village of Bragar, you can still admire a gateway arched with the jawbones of an unfortunate blue whale; the corpse of the harpooned 80ft creature was washed ashore in September 1920 and was one of the biggest ever recorded.
the blue whale is, of course, the largest animal ever known to have existed. though not quite as enormous, its humpback cousin (Megaptera
novaeangliae) is still a splendid thing, adults typically 39ft to 52ft in length and weighing in at a gulping 79,000lb (39.5 tons).
the humpback whale has a knobby and characterful head, unusually long pectoral fins, and a very handsome fluked tail. It is popular with whale-watchers because, unlike shyer kin, it loves ‘breaching’ and playing about on the surface of the ocean.
this also, of course, made it dreadfully vulnerable in the days of industrial whaling. At least 200,000 humpback whales were slain in the course of the 20th century, reducing the global population by 90 per cent – and by the time a ban was decreed by the International Whaling Commission, in 1966, only 5,000 survived.
today, despite such hazards as collisions with ships or entanglement in fishing nets, the worldwide humpback whale population is estimated at 80,000. And worldwide is apt, for it is a truly global animal.
Humpback whales are ‘baleen whales’, sieving their prey from vast quantities of seawater through 600 plates of shaggy whalebone in their upper jaws, and are found in every ocean. S INCE the demise of the bloody whaling, a population has in recent decades re-established itself in the Mediterranean. they live on krill and small fish – some 2,000lb of it a day – and are incredible travellers, given to tireless migration from chill polar waters to the warmer tropical seas where they prefer to breed.
Each year a humpback whale will clock up an almost unbelievable 16,000 miles.
they are not that sociable. the needs of nature apart, humpback whales prefer to voyage alone, though they will occasionally group for a few hours. Nor, when it comes to mating, are they particularly romantic.
‘Competition is usually fierce,’ pants one authority. ‘Unrelated males, dubbed escorts, frequently trail females, as well as cow-calf pairs. Males gather into “competitive groups” around a female and fight for the right to mate with her.
‘Group size ebbs and flows as unsuccessful males retreat and others arrive. Behaviours include breaching, spyhopping, lobtailing, tail-slapping, pectoral fin-slapping, peduncle throws, charging and parrying…’
If that sounds like a rough Friday night in Glasgow, there is one endearing feature – humpback lads are terrific singers.
Indeed, the species is famous for its long, loud and complex song – an eerie mix of clicks, screeches and crooning, serving – we guess – both to impress the ladies and warn off other dudes. It may also be ‘echo-locative’ – a form of sonar, perhaps to find a distant shoal of fish.
You can listen to recordings of humpback arias online; each song lasts for ten to 20 minutes, a male in particularly bullish trim can sing continuously for 24 hours, and songs are most regional.
All North Atlantic humpbacks sing the same one, while North Pacific beasts have another number entirely.
And, as scientists cannot agree as to why humpback whales sing, they cannot even explain how.
they have no vocal cords and can make music for an age without exhaling. there is some sort of ‘larynx-like structure’ in their throats, but the mechanics of the music elude us. their lyrical talents apart, humpbacks can also grunt, groan, snort and bark.
Females are sexually mature at five and males at seven. Pregnancy lasts 11 and a half months, which must be tedious, and most calves in the Northern Hemisphere are born in January and February.
‘Calf’ is perhaps a relative term – at birth, a baby humpback whale is 20ft long and weighs 1.8 tons. they thrive on mother’s milk – a vivid pink, and 50 per cent fat – and are fully weaned after a year.the creatures are
formidable hunters, sometimes stunning their prey by mighty thwacks of tail or fin on the water, gorging themselves through summer and living off their fat reserves in winter.
A group will also, for a few hours, co-operate in an ingenious ‘bubble hunt’ – encircling a shoal of some tempting dainty, blowing bubbles to make a continuous ring around it, pitilessly tightening the ring till the fish are virtually one mass, and then swimming upwards through it, devouring thousands of herring or whatever in a matter of seconds.
Man apart, they have only one serious foe – the killer whale which, as a 2014 study in Australian waters attested, likes to target and kill juvenile humpbacks, especially if they are unescorted by Mum.
Otherwise, humpbacks get on rather well with other cetaceans.
They have been recorded singing to fin whales and one, off Hawaii, played happily for hours with a bottlenose dolphin.
They also have a streak of endearing kindliness. There are welldocumented instances of humpbacks intervening to defend other members of the whale family, and even seals, from killer whales.
Last September, whale biologist Nan Hauser – as she was snorkelling off the Cook Islands – was belatedly grateful to two humpback whales who whooshed to her aid when she was menaced by a 15ft tiger shark.
One shoved her firmly away, then tried to tuck her under its fin; the other kept beating the shark into retreat by thumps of its tail.
Hauser was particularly bewildered because it was only when she was back in her boat that she at last realised a shark had been eyeing her up as its prospective lunch – though the whole encounter was filmed by her horrified colleagues above.
This, in fact, is the first known instance of a humpback actively protecting a human – and one of the whales then approached the vessel as if to check that Hauser, 63, was all right.
‘They truly display altruism,’ she said gratefully, ‘sometimes at the risk of losing their own lives.’
It is just another reason to love humpback whales – and loved they are. They are amiable and curious, often approaching a boat full of whale-watchers and lying by it or beneath it for hours.
They enjoy amusing themselves on the surface and, of course, ‘breach’ spectacularly, exploding from the water and then crashing in a mighty backflip.
Individuals are also easy to identify, as every humpback’s tail is subtly unique.
In Hawaii, where they have been marketing whale-watching for decades as an ‘eco-tourism’ experience, they gratefully figure humpback whales are worth $20million (£14million) annually to the state’s economy.
They also seem to be taking avidly to Scotland. In the late 1980s, sightings of humpback whales in our waters were – annually – in single digits. As recently as 2003, none was spotted at all.
The trend since has been firmly upwards. In 2016, there were more than 40 sightings of almost 90 individual whales.
There are particular hotspots: North East Scotland, the Minch, the Clyde, the Firth of Forth.
There have been a good many sightings in the waters around Tiumpan Head, 11 miles north of Stornoway, and locals have found a pattern: humpbacks are most likely to drop by from October to March and from May to July.
Ron MacDonald, a respected biologist who recently retired from a senior position with Scottish Natural Heritage and who describes himself candidly as ‘besotted by humpback whales’, has a theory. ‘Most of the observed humpbacks passed close to the Northern and Western Isles, so is it possible we’re seeing some of these en route to their southern breeding grounds?
‘The protracted autumn/winter peak in numbers coincides with their southward migration, as does the summer peak when they return north to their feeding grounds in the northern North East Atlantic, the northern North Sea and Barents Sea.’
But it may be there are simply, each year, more and more humpback whales, as their numbers continue to recover half a century after the ban on hunting them.
According to MacDonald, globally their numbers are expanding by between 2 per cent and 11 per cent annually, and wherever that happens – it is no less true of people – some will migrate in search of less crowded territory and new resources.
‘Could it be that what we are seeing are “newcomers” to British waters testing the water, so to speak?’ ponders MacDonald.
‘Certainly there is evidence of a sustained recovery in sand eel populations in the northern and central North Sea and similarly a recovery in herring populations in places like the Minch and the Firth of Forth.’
He worries about the possible impact of Brexit on our fisheries and our fishing practice, and welcomes consultation on four new Marine Protected Areas in Scottish waters – one of them off the east coast of Lewis – and for which assorted conservation groups have been lobbying for years.
Local fishermen, understandably, are apprehensive and point out that the very wealth of biodiversity in the Minch – basking sharks, minke whales, Risso’s dolphins and so on – suggests they have husbanded it pretty well so far without any need for a restrictive MPA.
Where MacDonald is on strong moral ground is his continued pressure to protect humpback whales – and other beautiful creatures – from entanglement and drowning in fishing gear.
The Scottish Government is now funding a study of the problem, which fishermen are as anxious to fix as the professional ecologists, and the more so as humpback whales increasingly take to Scottish life.
‘Scotland is enjoying the return of the humpback whale to our seas,’ enthuses MacDonald.
‘The future looks bright for the return of the giants.’