One of the primary objectives of the Citizen Fins project is to gain better understanding of the movements of animals across the expanding distributional range of the East coast population. Knowing which animals are seen in different areas, especially on those areas that we cannot survey systematically (e.g. along the NE England coast), contributes towards their monitoring. If animals spend large amount of time outside the surveyed areas, we would not know if they were just somewhere else or they were not alive anymore. Submissions of photographs of animals seen south of the Firth of Forth thus help us keep track of animals in the population, even those that are well known and tend to be seen every year.
One of this animals is “Singers”, which is #001 catalogued animal in the population. First seen in the Moray Firth back in 1989, this animal has been seen pretty much every single year since off the east coast of Scotland. During the 1990s and early 2000s it was regularly spotted in the Moray Firth during the University of Aberdeen‘s photoID surveys. Then it started to be seen along the Grampian coast the late 2000s. Since 2015, “Singers” was exclusively seen in St Andrews Bay and Tay Estuary waters by SMRU during the summer photoID surveys, but in 2021 its travel patterns changed again. In June 2021, a photo of Singers taken off Pittenweem in the Firth of Forth was submitted to Citizen Fins by David Thomson. Later on, it was seen again in the Firth of Forth during the SMRU surveys in August 2021.
In early September however, our colleagues at the University of Aberdeen where happily surprised to see #001 during their surveys in the Moray Firth; this was the first time they saw “Singers” in the area since 2014!
But this was not the end to #001 travels this summer. This past week, we had some photographs submitted by Stuart Baines, from the Scarborough Porpoise facebook group. Turns out #001 was among the dolphins photographed from land by Stuart on the 23rd and on the 28th of September off Scarborough!
This in an example on how animals in this population can travel long distances and cover the population’s range. Others might stay in one area for longer time (or years), as different animals show different individual preferences, but these can change over time too. This is one of the puzzles we are trying to understand. The dedicated photoID surveys by SMRU and by the University of Aberdeen have now concluded for 2021 (we run them May to September only), but submissions to Citizen Fins will hopefully keep giving us an insight onto the animals’ movements this autumn and following spring, so keep them coming!