A north-east wildlife photographer had a whale of a time this weekend when she managed to capture a humpback off the coast of an Aberdeenshire village.
Eilidh Watson, a marine mammal medic, had heard rumours of a large creature swimming close to Newburgh at the Ythan Estuary and set off on Saturday to investigate.
After spotting seabirds congregating around a patch of water, she focused her lens and managed to snap the enormous cetacean lungefeeding – a form of predation where whales rapidly swim through shoals of prey with their jaw open, trying to scoop up as much food as possible in one mouthful.
In Mrs Watson’s photographs, the beast can be seen smashing through the surface of the North Sea, sending dozens of tiny fish flying through the air as it breaches.
Humpbacks are rarely seen in UK waters, and when they are, they usually found either swimming offshore from or beached on the Western Isles, so Mrs Watson was amazed to find one travelling along Scotland’s north-east coast.
The 35-year-old, from Hatton, said: “There had been reports of something there for the last few days, so I wanted to head down and see what it was.
“Everyone was adamant that it was a more common minke whale, so I was absolutely astounded to see a humpback coming out of the water.
“At first I wasn’t completely sure, but when I got a good look at its fins I knew for sure it was a humpback I started jumping up and down and dancing, it was just so exciting.
“Normally you would see them diving into deeper water with their tail flukes pointing up, but because it was shallower water – it was only about 50 metres (164 feet) from the shore – it had to lunge feed, which made for some fantastic pictures of it surfacing.
“It’s so very, very rare to even see a humpback close to Scotland, and it’s even rarer to have them visible in the north-east, so I still can’t believe I was in the right place at the right time to photograph it.”
