Minke whale sighting off Cemaes Head, 2010's

Description

Steve Hartley is the founder of Cardigan Bay Marine Wildlife Centre, New Quay. He now runs Dolphin Survey Boat Trips, however previously fished the waters of Cardigan Bay.

A member of our Living Seas Team sat down with Steve, to discuss his memories of life in the Bay. Here, he finding evidence of a minke whale off Cemaes Head.

Recollection as follows:

"So, minke whales. We were down on an All Day Survey, again Sarah would remember this, we were down on an All Day Survey the other side of Cemaes Head a couple of years ago. We had Lyndon, Janet, Sarah, myself, and others onboard…and we saw something. It was a flat calm day, and we saw something which Lyndon immediately said: 'that is just like what you get just after a minke whale has come up and gone down'. It was a very active…there were loads of manx shearwaters all down in one spot, with a bit of a boil in the water, all of that. So, we stayed there for twenty minutes. We didn’t see anything again, which is a real shame – we possibly should have stayed longer.

But a couple of days later, the people from Swansea University, doing the Rhizostoma study, they’d done an aerial survey to try and track down a bloom of barrel jellyfish - and they’d spotted two minke whales. One right where we, well one within 100 yards of where had 'seen' ours or saw the footprint or evidence; and there was another one that same day off Aberporth Bay.

So, you know, occasionally they do come up this way. But very, very rarely."

To learn more about Cardigan Bay Marine Wildlife Centre, please visit - https://www.welshwildlife.org/visitor-centres/cardigan-bay-marine-wildlife-centre/.