{"id":775020,"date":"2026-07-02T07:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T07:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/775020\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T07:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T07:48:10","slug":"exploratory-and-curious-animals-mysterious-rise-in-orca-sightings-off-northumberland-coast-marine-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/775020\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Exploratory and curious animals\u2019: mysterious rise in orca sightings off Northumberland coast | Marine life"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Farne Islands off the Northumberland<\/a> coast have long drawn fans of the natural world keen to catch sight of the resident guillemots and puffins.<\/p>\n

But as recently as last week, another much bigger black-and-white animal has been delighting wildlife spotters. Orcas have been appearing more regularly than ever before.<\/p>\n

In the past, fishers working on these waters may have caught a glimpse of orcas far out to sea, but this year and last, sightings have been more regular, and much closer to the shore, with dolphins also becoming much more common.<\/p>\n

Cetacean experts have said it is too difficult to say why orca and dolphin sightings off the Northumberland coast have dramatically increased, but said it could be a welcome sign that the marine ecosystem is becoming healthier.<\/p>\n

Andrew Douglas: \u2018I was like a little child.\u2019 Photograph: Christopher Thomond\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

When Andrew Douglas, who owns Serenity Boat Tours, first saw the orcas last year, he said he \u201cwas like a little child \u2026 excited as hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I looked around at everybody else,\u201d he said, \u201cand the smiles are just beaming, and you just think to yourself, that\u2019s what it\u2019s all about.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big dorsal fins on the males are just absolutely huge, it just makes you smile, it\u2019s really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then, he and members of his crew have spotted pods of orcas a handful of times \u2013 previously, he had only ever seen orcas once, back when he was 20 years old.<\/p>\n

Now participants on his tours often ask the same question: \u201cWhen will we see the orcas?\u201d But, he said, \u201cthey\u2019re just unpredictable, so you never know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Participants on the boat tours often ask the same question: \u2018When will we see the orcas?\u2019 Photograph: Christopher Thomond\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

While he said the Farne Islands are an attraction in themselves, he has seen \u201cspurts of it getting a lot busier\u201d since the orca sightings. \u201cHaving the orca, it doesn\u2019t half boost things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

While he is unsure exactly why the orcas are being spotted more often, he thinks a government ban on sandeel fishing may have helped.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the best thing the government\u2019s done so far,\u201d he said. \u201cThey banned it about two years ago, and that\u2019s made a massive difference straight away.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot just from the orcas, but from dolphins and other things, you don\u2019t pinch from the bottom of the food chain, you need that bottom of the food chain to get the rest of the stuff working, and it\u2019s made a massive difference for the birds as well, so I think that\u2019s one of the big things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sandeel, he said, are the \u201ctiny, tiny fish\u201d that feed those at the bottom of the food chain, and when you take that away, animals higher up the chain struggle to survive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings have just started to come back,\u201d he said. \u201cSo you\u2019re starting to see a lot more mackerel now, a lot of herring now, so I think these orcas are attracted to all that food.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crewman Aaron Fordy, who was born and raised in Seahouses, where the boats operate from, has seen the orcas four times now \u2013 and he can list the specific dates off the top of his head.<\/p>\n

Crewman Aaron Fordy. Photograph: Christopher Thomond\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re used to dolphins and porpoises and things which are a lot smaller,\u201d he said, \u201cand then you get an orca which is massive, big dorsal fins, they stick out like a sore thumb as well, just black and white in a blue sea, it\u2019s really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first time, he said, he and his crewmate \u201cwere both ecstatic\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just jumping about, really excited to see them, because of course it\u2019s a first experience for us too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

They have sent videos of the whales to researchers in the Shetlands, who have said that rather than the same pod returning, the sightings have been of several different pods.<\/p>\n

Dr Conor Ryan, an honorary research fellow at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, said there was \u201cnot really a clear picture\u201d to explain the increase, and said it could be due to a range of factors, including better publicised sightings, orcas moving inshore, or growing populations.<\/p>\n

However, he cautioned that orca have struggled to breed in polluted British waters, and the Shetland population is on the verge of dying out.<\/p>\n

He also said the sandeel fishing ban was \u201ca very logical place to look for an explanation\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy removing the bottom of the food chain, what we do is we decrease the biomass of the whole system so there\u2019s less energy, less calories available for everybody in the ecosystem, and usually top predators are the ones that really suffer from that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Puffins spotted from a Serenity Farne Island Tours boat. Photograph: Christopher Thomond\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

He added that studying whales was a good \u201clitmus test for how the ecosystem is doing\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd in general,\u201d he said, \u201cif you\u2019re getting big predators returning to an area, that\u2019s a good sign of a healthy ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Julia Sutherland, a researcher at the University of St Andrews, said orca are \u201chighly mobile animals\u201d and \u201cit could be a combination of increase in presence, but it also could be a slight increase in reporting as well, thanks to social media\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, she added: \u201cWhat we know about killer whales here in the UK is we\u2019re lacking so much knowledge in comparison to elsewhere in the world, so it\u2019s quite hard to draw really concrete conclusions at this stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Luke Rendell, also from the University of St Andrews, said \u201cthe population of orca around the UK is actually one of the most polluted in the world and so they don\u2019t have a great reproductive potential,\u201d but, he said, \u201cthey are exploratory and curious animals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of it could just be exploration and expanding their knowledge, some of it could be a reduction in the food resources where they were before and needing to explore more.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast have long drawn fans of the natural world keen to catch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":775021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-775020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/775021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}