North-east coast is the place to be to spot marine mammals

Cetaceans spotted off the north-east coast every 12 minutes

The waters between Peterhead and Arbroath offer the best chance of seeing a whale or dolphin in the UK.

A cetacean was spotted nearly every hour around the UK in a special watch – but in South Grampian one was seen nearly every 12 minutes.

The area had more than five times the national average of sightings of a whale or dolphin during the nine-day study.

Memorable sightings for watchers in Scotland last year included long-finned pilot whales in the Moray Firth and many sightings of killer whales in the north.

The Sea Watch Foundation’s National Whale and Dolphin Watch event aims to raise the profile of Britain’s whales, dolphins and porpoises while finding out more about their distribution.

Members of the public were invited to join organised watches around the UK from land and sea as well as conducting their own surveys.

The overall sightings were the secondhighest for the event and just 14 short of the previous year, which was a record.

Scotland once again held the highest number of sightings at 608 (43%).

Orkney and the north of Scotland as well as South Grampian saw the highest species diversity with eight species recorded in each.

Shetland and Northeast Scotland also recorded high species diversity, with seven species reported in each region.

Harbour porpoises, recorded 697 times, made up half of all records for the event.

Once again, bottlenose dolphins were the second-most frequently reported species with 224 sightings (15.89%).

One of the UK’s two large semiresident populations of bottlenose dolphins can be found in the Moray Firth.

The most frequently reported whale species was the minke, accounting for 8.1% of the entire sightings total.

The species was mainly seen in the northern half of the British Isles.

Common dolphins were the thirdmost abundant species recorded, with 207 sightings – 14.7% of all records.

White-beaked dolphins were reported 18 times, while killer whales were reported 39 times in the waters around Shetland, Orkney, north Scotland and the west coast of Scotland.

The largest group consisted of seven animals around Shetland.”

Picture: Torsten Franke Dolphins, porpoises and whales are a frequent sight off the coast of Angus and Aberdeenshire.

Picture: Gareth Jennings On the lookout for marine mammals from the beach at St Cyrus.