{"id":786986,"date":"2026-09-30T02:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T02:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/786986\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T02:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T02:26:10","slug":"onlookers-left-stunned-as-rare-humpback-whale-sighting-made-off-pembrokeshire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/786986\/","title":{"rendered":"Onlookers left stunned as rare humpback whale sighting made off Pembrokeshire"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘This really is some of the best that nature has to offer’Rare humpback whale stuns crew off the coast of Wales<\/p>\n

A shark guide was stunned when he realised a whale he had spotted off the Pembrokeshire<\/a> coast was a humpback. Dan Abbott was around 25 to 30 miles off the shore of Milford Haven in the Celtic Deep when he first spotted the whale.<\/p>\n

He initially thought it was a fin whale, but as it got closer he realised he was looking at something much rarer for the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we first started seeing the blows – the vapour that goes up in the air from the whales – my first thought was that it must be a fin whale because that\u2019s what we usually see,\u201d he said. For the biggest stories in Wales first sign up to our daily newsletter here<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a few other whales around but the one that we were looking at was getting closer.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs it was getting closer I was examining it and as it passed the boat the first time you could see barnacles around the face, you could see the white pectoral fin which fin whales don\u2019t have.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other thing humpbacks do is they lift their tails out of the water, which fin whales don\u2019t do. After those three things it became clearer that this was not a fin whale, it was a humpback.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dan, who runs blue shark snorkelling experiences with Pembrokeshire Boat Charters, was on his final trip of the season when the whale appeared.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had a great season, loads of sharks, loads of other things out there too like bluefin tuna,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do sometimes see whales, but the whales we would normally see are minke whales which are the smallest baleen whales that we have in the UK, and also fin whales which are the largest whale we see in the UK and the second largest animal in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The video of the encounter was filmed around a minute after Dan realised what he was looking at.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can hear from my voice I am very surprised that this is a humpback,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Dan captured the rare sighting on camera(Image: Dan Abbott)<\/p>\n

Dan is known online as Sharkman Dan<\/a> and has a background in sharks, having filmed great whites in South Africa and appeared on a Netflix programme about the creatures.<\/p>\n

He said humpback whales are not unusual in UK waters, but seeing one in this particular part of the Celtic Deep is.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing whales out there isn\u2019t unusual, and seeing humpbacks in the UK isn\u2019t unusual,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been good sightings of them out in Cornwall in the winter, which I\u2019ve also gone out and filmed on the drone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey see humpbacks around Ireland, in Scotland you can see whales every day of the week, so it isn\u2019t unusual in that regard – there are whales around.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut in that particular area, around 35 miles out when we are in the Celtic Deep, those aren\u2019t the species that we would see – or the fishermen when they\u2019re out looking for things. It\u2019s usually the minke whales and the fin whales.\u201d<\/p>\n

The boat was \u201cbuzzing\u201d after the sighting, with passengers having already spent around four hours in the water with blue sharks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had just spent four hours in the water with these guys with blue sharks which was really phenomenal; the blue sharks coming right up to these guys,\u201d Dan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an incredible shark experience, I would put it as one of the best shark experiences you can have on the planet and I\u2019ve had a fair few.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo for them to have already experienced that, this really is some of the best that nature has to offer. It doesn\u2019t happen every trip – let\u2019s put it that way!\u201d<\/p>\n

Dan said he had actually been excited to see what he thought was going to be a fin whale.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I was so convinced in my head that this was going to be a fin whale which would have also been absolutely amazing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps my favourite experience in my filming career has been filming fin whales in the Celtic Deep.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have been very excited to see a fin whale, but it was just that it turned out to be an animal that I knew was really rare to see out there in the Celtic Deep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Humpbacks are one of the large baleen whale species which have made a major comeback since the days of whaling.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re one of the large great whales that have made a huge comeback since the days of whaling (banned in 1986),\u201d Dan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAcross the UK there are some phenomenal places where you can see them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re the ones famous for their bubble net feeding that we see in places like Antarctica and Canada when they use their bubbles to corral the fish into a ball.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople go and watch them in Norway, it\u2019s coming into the season now in the winter time where they are feeding on herring in the fjords.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re one of the most charismatic whale species because they\u2019re quite prolific at the surface.<\/p>\n

\u201cTypically these are the ones that we see breaching up out of the water doing big pectoral fin slaps, big tail slaps as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dan said there could be a number of reasons why the humpback was in the Celtic Deep, but he did not believe the sighting itself was a cause for concern.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere could have been a number of reasons, but it might mean nothing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou always see comments on these sorts of things online saying it\u2019s bad news because they don\u2019t have enough food.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not always untrue, but in this scenario they travel huge distances all the time anyway and to say there are humpbacks in the south of Ireland, to get across to the Celtic Deep actually isn\u2019t that big a distance for a humpback to travel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say that particular one is one to be concerned about. It could literally just be the case that this animal is travelling and there is a lot of food in the Celtic Deep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dan said the return of humpbacks and other great whales was an encouraging conservation story, although they still face threats from climate change, ship strikes, habitat destruction and overfishing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe great whales, the big ones such as fins, blues, humpbacks, are a success story in that they are making a comeback,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they are still threatened by other things: climate change and ship strikes being the most common things, and habitat destruction.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they have been success stories as well, there has been a huge comeback especially with humpbacks since the end of international whaling which we (the UK) played a part in.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo see them again is a really amazing thing and is an encouraging marine life story.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘This really is some of the best that nature has to offer’Rare humpback whale stuns crew off the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":786987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[1397,226301,25902,90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-786986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-environment","tag-milford-haven","tag-pembrokeshire","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=786986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/786987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}