{"id":3634,"date":"2016-09-12T09:40:50","date_gmt":"2016-09-12T08:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3634"},"modified":"2016-09-12T09:40:50","modified_gmt":"2016-09-12T08:40:50","slug":"weather-window-newts-north-sea-pelagic-100916","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/north-sea\/weather-window-newts-north-sea-pelagic-100916","title":{"rendered":"Weather window; NEWT’s North Sea Pelagic 10\/09\/16"},"content":{"rendered":"

My obsession with the weather forecast tends to intensify whenever we’ve got a pelagic wildlife trip coming up, and even more so when it’s one of our 10hr ‘Northumberland Ultimate Pelagic’<\/a> sailings.\u00a0 In the far reaches of the Farne Deeps even a fairly benign wind direction like southwesterly (which isn’t a problem in nearshore waters) can produce ‘interesting’ conditions…<\/p>\n

I’d been out on Friday carrying out survey work for the North East Cetacean Project<\/a>, and the southerly wind had piled the sea up into a white-capped deep rolling swell.\u00a0 Sunday’s forecast was for similar, but Saturday looked as though we’d have a nice weather window \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Heading north from the Tyne we had the wind and the swell behind us, so it was a fairly smooth journey.\u00a0 By the time we reached the edge of the Farne Deeps, having encountered our first group of White-beaked Dolphins<\/strong><\/em> along the way, that swell was up around 1.5-2m.\u00a0 Then the dolphins started to appear – a group of 10 were joined by more and we’d soon got up to 25 White-beaked Dolphins<\/strong><\/em> around us \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 At one point we had 11 bow-riding between the hulls, packed together like sardines in a tin, and another ten alongside us.\u00a0 Eventually they stopped playing and gradually peeled off to return to feeding, just before Anthony spotted a Minke Whale<\/strong><\/em> ahead of us…which proved to be two Minkes<\/strong><\/em>, an adult and a juvenile.\u00a0 As we headed back south, with a Harbour Porpoise<\/strong><\/em> putting in a typically brief appearance in a flat, glassy calm, sea and odd Sooty Shearwaters<\/strong><\/em> added to the day total (which was around 50) Anthony asked me if I would scan the horizon out the east through my binoculars, as he’d seen what looked like very distant splashing.\u00a0 Sure enough, there were the splashes, which eventually resolved into a group of at least 30 White-beaked Dolphins<\/strong><\/em> and a memorable end to a stunning day.<\/p>\n

\"White-beaked<\/p>\n

\"White-beaked<\/p>\n

\"White-beaked<\/p>\n

\"White-beaked<\/p>\n

\"Minke<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My obsession with the weather forecast tends to intensify whenever we’ve got a pelagic wildlife trip coming up, and even more so when it’s one of our 10hr ‘Northumberland Ultimate Pelagic’ sailings.\u00a0 In the far reaches of the Farne Deeps even a fairly benign wind direction like southwesterly (which isn’t a problem in nearshore waters) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[240,309,580,365,841],"class_list":["post-3634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-north-sea","tag-harbour-porpoise","tag-minke-whale","tag-north-east-cetacean-project","tag-sooty-shearwater","tag-white-beaked-dolphin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3646,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3634\/revisions\/3646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}