Return of the Yorkshire whales
As Japan resumes whaling, several species are now thriving off the British coast. Joe Shute sets sail
On Monday morning, as some of the first Japanese whaling ships for 33 years returned to shore with their bloody cargo, skipper Sean Baxter puttered out from Staithes harbour on the North Yorkshire coast in the opposite direction.
A few miles out, over the still North Sea, a flock of gannets were diving deep into the water in pursuit of the giant shoals of herring spawning below. And then, a few metres from our boat, the first snort of water and black fin sliced the surface as a minke whale breached. Then another, and another; the 36ft leviathans, swimming so close you could smell the sour cabbage on their breath that led to them being nicknamed “stinky minkes” by sailors of the past.
In Japan – which resumed commercial whaling earlier in the
summer – minkes are harpooned and butchered for their meat. Whaling for minkes started off the northern coast of Japan this week, as September is deemed the best time to hunt them due to the whales fattening themselves up.
The world may be reacting in horror to Japan’s decision to pull out of the international moratorium on whaling, but off the coast of Yorkshire, and indeed all around the British Isles, the giant mammals are thriving.
This summer in Yorkshire has marked a record number of sightings, with 29 minke whales spotted in one single trip on August 25. At the end of our trip on Monday, the official count was 20. Sei whales and humpback whales have also been spotted off the Yorkshire coastline.
Meanwhile at the start of August, a kayaker in Cornwall recorded incredible footage of a humpback breaching near Penzance. In 2013, a humpback was seen off the Norfolk coast for the first time since records began in the 18th century.
The record numbers being spotted has led to the birth of a new industry. Sean Baxter, a member of the Staithes lifeboat crew, who has worked as a commercial fisherman since he was 15, now runs whale-watching tours on his boat, All My Sons. Another skipper has also started up from the harbour of the tiny fishing village.
Along the coast in Whitby – once the capital of Britain’s whaling industry and where a jawbone of a bowhead whale still adorns the town’s East Cliff as testament to its grisly past – tours are also starting to take place.
“My job is catching fish and killing things, and as I get older and longer in the tooth, I really don’t like it,” says Baxter, whose family stretches back generations in Staithes. “To go out there and not have to clean the blood off the back of the boat and introduce people to this wildlife is absolutely amazing.”
Baxter insists the whales have always been here – it is just the fishermen never bothered reporting them – but the science suggests differently. Last year, a record number of cetaceans (whales, porpoises and dolphins) were spotted off Britain’s coastline. According to figures collected by the Sea Watch Foundation, more than 13 species, including minke, humpback and orcas, were recorded in 500 sightings over the period of two weeks – a 50 per cent increase on the previous year.
This summer, trained observers from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust have been on board Baxter’s boat to record how many whales are now travelling to feed in the North Sea from colder waters in Scandinavia.
So what is prompting this spectacular return? According to Jono Leadley, a guide for Yorkshire Coast Nature, which runs the whalewatching trips in partnership with Baxter, climate change, warming seas, stricter controls over commercial fishing and the international moratorium on whaling first agreed in 1982 have all played their part.
He describes Japan’s decision to resume commercial whaling – even if it is being done on a smaller scale to previous decades – as “incredibly sad”. Although with a distinct lack of support from the country’s younger generation, he says it will soon collapse.
“It’s really cynical and driven by national pride more than anything. Over the last couple of years, income from whale watching in Japan has overtaken income from whale meat, so I’m very optimistic it will soon die as an industry. I’m still very sad for the whales that will be killed in the meantime. They are sentient animals, very sociable, and to die like that is dreadful.”
Despite weighing several tons, minke whales are relatively fastgrowing. Leadley believes we may soon witness a similar population explosion in other species of whales. “To be a few miles off the Yorkshire coast and experience being so close to these animals is wonderful,” he says.
However, the news in Britain is not all good. As whale populations increase, a record number of strandings are also being seen. In 2018, nearly 250 strandings were reported around the Irish coastline – the highest since records began – with five Cuvier’s beaked whales discovered in a single day.
This summer, the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme has launched an app to report beached cetaceans following a record year for strandings with more than 930 cases reported – including 100 beaked whales along the west coast.
Beachings have always occurred along England’s coasts. Records dating back to 1913 log 12,000 reports of whale, dolphin and porpoise strandings over the past century. But scientists believe modern technologies and shipping traffic are fuelling the rise.
Military sonar is thought to interfere with whale navigation, while noise from the destruction to the seabed caused by the construction of offshore wind farms is another cause for concern – although the science remains vague.
Work is soon to begin on a huge wind farm off the Yorkshire coast at Dogger Bank, spanning 430 square miles, which it is feared could impact on the burgeoning whale population of the North Sea.
“When they build wind farms, the [noise] impact is colossal,” says Leadley. “It can sound like explosions banging into the sea floor, and you can see why that could impact on species which use a lot of sonar. We’re connecting instances where big sound activity going on underwater happens at the same time as a big stranding, so it’s definitely linked.”
Minke whales are different, communicating instead using a complex series of clicks, whistles and squeaks. The main impact on them is becoming entangled in discarded fishing equipment, colliding with ships or, as is currently occurring in Japan, meeting the end of a harpoon.
According to Baxter, the Whitby whalers of the 18th and 19th centuries would sail as far as the Arctic in pursuit of ever larger prey. Such sustained pressure resulted in the extinction of species such as the Atlantic grey whale, with many other species pushed to the very brink.
“We overexploited a lot of our oceans – and the North Sea in particular – for centuries,” says Leadley. “What we are seeing today is incredible. Minke whales are showing things are starting to come back, which is really exciting.”
On several occasions during our six hours at sea, we spot a great spout of water shooting up into the sky. Minke whales do not behave in this way, so the feeling on board is it is another unidentified species. Possibly a humpback? Possibly something else?
“There is something out there and, as yet, we can’t find it,” Baxter says, the love of the chase glinting in the old sea dog’s eyes.
Whatever it proves to be, when this modern-day Captain Ahab meets his Moby-dick, both will live to tell the tale.