Killer Whales in Northern Ireland Loch



Cockney Mackem said:
Some of the manoeuvres Orcas come up with are crafty as owt like. Especially the one where they all charge at an ice floe, creating a wave that washes the seal into the sea where one of them is waiting to ambush it
Click to expand...
As shown in the Hobbit and horse attacks on Barrack Road Newcastle.
 
ErichZann said:
100% dolphins. I wish it had been orcas.

Dorinda Kealoha, engagement officer at Durham Wildlife Trust who previously worked for the National Marine Aquarium, said: “It is definitely an orca – based on the colouring and markings are different and the size of the dorsal fin.

She's just listed the reasons why it wasn't orcas.

Below is from the actual experts....



Many of our group's members will have seen the articles in the Sunderland Echo and the Chronicle 'confirming' that the animals seen off Seaham yesterday were Orcas.

Our position is still that they weren't.

When we identified them as Bottlenose Dolphins that wasn't a hasty decision. Images and video were studied by several observers, from multiple marine conservation NGO's, who between them have hundreds of thousands of miles of offshore survey work, in both hemispheres, on their CV's. We have extensive experience of analysing images of cetaceans and between us have vast experience of both Orca and Bottlenose Dolphin, particularly the dolphins along the east coast of Scotland and England. We are qualified Marine Mammal Observers (MMO is an actual accreditation although some observers in the North East appear to be unaware of that).

All of the videos taken yesterday show Bottlenose Dolphins. An offshore surveyor who was watching from the shore confirmed they were Bottlenose Dolphins, as did the people on a boat that was out there at the time. The image of two animals at the surface is so typical of Bottlenose Dolphin it's hard to understand why anyone would think they were anything else. The one slightly contentious image is a poor quality image that shows animals breaching close together. The animal closest to the camera appears to have a beak, which rules out Orca, and it doesn't have an eye patch. It has a white throat which appears to be the pale throat of a dolphin highlighted by sunlight, but no eye patch. Anyone claiming that animal to be an Orca needs to explain that. The dorsal fin shape is also inconsistent with Orca, and the pectoral fin shape is very inconsistent with Orca.

Luckily, decisions about cetacean identification and occurrence are based on carefully considered discussion between the people who's role it is to make those decisions and, ultimately, that's what will happen in this case, regardless of the desire of the media to wheel out 'experts' who'll give them the answer that gets more social media reaction or more traffic to their websites.

Please refrain from sharing the articles from the Echo or the Chronicle in this group.
Click to expand...

Blimey, got a bit of a chip on their shoulder
 
DJP said:
And the various cetacean sites I follow have said the Echo's Orca "expert" is talking bollocks. They were definitely bottlenose dolphins off Seaham. The "white patch" on their faces were simply the sun's glare off the sea and if they were supposed to be Orca then they have seem to have deformed pectoral fins, as the fins on the Seaham photos and videos show they have pectoral fins of a shape common to bottlenose dolphins. People want it to be orcas, they crave that it was orcas, they are obsessed with the notion that it was orcas.

But it was bottlenose dolphins.
Click to expand...
Dorsal fins don’t look right either- I initially thought they were Orca.
 

Back
Top