Review of 2019 Shorewatch Data
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Review of 2019 Shorewatch Data Fun fact: The very first Shorewatch took place on 19th March 2005 at 15.05 Disclaimer Just a quick note that this data review explores the data collected by Shorewatchers in 2019. It should not be used in the place of formal analysis or presented as such. These data are not for wider use or for commercial purposes without permission from WDC. Please contact [email protected] if you would like to use Shorewatch data and we will happily arrange data sharing. We are presenting data which has been entered into our database and so may be missing data which was not sent in or incomplete when received. There may be errors or inconsistencies in this review, please let us know if you see these and we will do our best to correct them! Now, onto the fun stuff! Shorewatch Review of 2019 2019 Shorewatch Highlights • Shorewatchers conducted 7,740 efforts in 2019 (up more than 500 from 2018!) • You documented 2,057 encounters with cetaceans over 1,448 positive efforts. • You spoke to 8,728 people around Shorewatch! What incredible reach to spread the word about whales and dolphins An encounter refers to a single sighting, consisting of one individual or a group of the same species. If you saw a group of Risso’s and a porpoise on the same watch, that would be two encounters – so would two separate sightings of the same species! Shorewatch Review of 2019 2018 Shorewatch highlights • Bottlenose dolphin were once again the most frequently sighted cetacean in 2019 – 787 positive efforts • Other regularly sighted species included: • harbour porpoise (303 positive efforts), • minke whale (149 positive efforts), and • Risso’s dolphin (72 positive efforts) • All of these are increases on 2018 except for Risso’s Deciding whether you are having one spread encounter or two unique encounters can be difficult. For baleen whales, we might assume they are separate encounters unless the individuals are within a few body lengths but pods of dolphins might be very spread out. And we can’t see when spread out individuals might be a single ‘group’ acoustically! Positive efforts aren’t influenced by whether you had one or many encounters so they are less variable between observers Shorewatch Review of 2019 We had 198 different watchers this year How often did you watch? 100 The right side of the 90 graph shows us that: 80 7 people did up to 70 • 60 104 watches 50 • 8 people did up to 40 182 watches 30 • 10 people did up 20 to 365 watches, 10 and 0 Up to Up to 12 up to 52 / Up to 104 Up to 182 • 4 people watched How often you 365/ More Once / Once a Once a / Twice a / Every watched (grouped) Once a than 365 more than once a month week week other day day day on average! How many people Frequency 41 93 35 7 8 10 4 watched this often Thank you for giving The left three bars show us that so much of your time! • 41 people did one watch last year • the biggest group of volunteers, 93 people, did between 2-12 watches • And 35 people did between 13-52 watches in 2019. All of these people and efforts add up quickly so thank you! Efforts by site since 2010 Sites 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Total Armadale Pier, Skye 34 68 118 220 Burghead A 196 240 280 202 272 1190 Burghead B 193 246 278 197 259 1173 Castle of Old Wick 1 3 2 26 72 42 37 57 240 Chanonry Point 61 106 180 166 145 137 132 192 137 504 1760 Cromarty 23 82 69 20 89 283 Cromarty South Sutor (trial) 4 70 74 Cullen 201 293 312 480 329 324 337 432 357 3065 Eigg Pier 25 25 Findochty Church (trial) 48 76 29 153 Fort George 116 2 137 380 502 503 1640 Fraserburgh 42 99 141 Kilt Rock, Skye 38 163 315 516 Kinghorn, Fife 36 117 153 Macduff, Gellymill 394 741 776 751 747 734 736 787 761 6427 Melness Church, Talmine 39 137 176 Nairn viewpoint 296 114 167 102 108 787 North Kessock 362 914 1216 1329 1437 691 353 422 435 385 7544 Rhue Lighthouse, Ullapool 49 187 178 211 625 Rodel, Harris 50 77 99 127 135 121 170 161 940 Spey Bay, Scottish Dolphin Centre 1997 1875 1331 1741 1712 1522 1834 1677 1805 1877 17371 St. John's Point, Caithness 182 379 282 63 906 Stoer Head Lighthouse 114 78 192 Strathy Point 9 76 77 40 55 42 30 33 12 374 Tiumpan Head A (West/North) 8 75 243 219 232 535 519 344 354 2529 Tiumpan Head B (East/South) 8 71 233 212 214 483 501 337 335 2394 Torry Battery, Aberdeen 43 168 277 405 656 712 528 370 3159 Trumpan Church, Skye (trial) 25 25 GrandShorewatch Total Review of 2019 2648 4081 4976 5877 6458 6042 6817 7332 7193 7740 59164 * Totals are slightly different as grid doesn’t include all sites 2019: positive efforts & species by site Trumpan Church, Skye (trial) Torry Battery, Aberdeen Tiumpan Head B (East/South) Tiumpan Head A (West/North) Strathy Point Stoer Head Lighthouse St. John's Point, Caithness Bottlenose Dolphin Spey Bay, Scottish Dolphin Centre Cetacean (unidentified) Rodel, Harris Rhue Lighthouse, Ullapool Common Dolphin North Kessock Dolphin (unidentified) Nairn viewpoint Fin whale Melness Church, Talmine Fin/Sei Whale Macduff, Gellymill Harbour Porpoise Kinghorn, Fife Humpback Whale Kilt Rock, Skye Killer Whale historic.Eigg, Glebe Fort George (overlooking Chanonry Point) Minke whale Findochty Church (trial) Northern Bottlenose Whale Eilean Glas (Scalpay Lighthouse), N. Harris Risso's dolphin Eigg Pier Sei whale Cullen Whale (unidentified baleen) Cromarty South Sutor (trial) White-Beaked Dolphin Cromarty Chanonry Point Look at the bottom for the total number of Castle of Old Wick Burghead B encounters. A colourful bar shows that more Shorewatch Review ofBurghead 2018 A difference species were seen from that site! Armadale Pier, Skye 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 Bottlenose dolphin encounters 1 2019 100 200 300 Number of encounters shown by circle size BND BND-pos Site Encounters efforts Chanonry Point / Ft George 283 249 Torry Battery, Aberdeen 271 199 Spey Bay, SDC 236 235 Macduff, Gellymill 32 31 Burghead combined 24 23 Cromarty S. Sutor (trial) 16 14 Cullen 13 13 Bottlenose dolphin are encountered Cromarty 11 10 the most often from our eastern sites. Kinghorn, Fife 5 5 Tiumpan combined 5 4 Note that some sites have more North Kessock 2 2 encounters than positive efforts; these Nairn viewpoint 1 1 sites are encountering multiple distinct Findochty Church (trial) 1 1 groups of bottlenose during one effort! Harbour porpoise encounters 1 2019 50 100 150 Number of encounters shown by circle size Harbour porpoises are seen all over the place – so much so that there was nowhere to fit the chart with encounter numbers; go to the next page to see how many harbour porpoise were encountered at each site! Harbour porpoise encounters 1 2019 50 100 150 Number of encounters HP HP-pos shown by circle size Site encounters efforts Tiumpan combined 139 91 Rhue Lighthouse, Ullapool 75 66 Kilt Rock, Skye 34 31 Rodel, Harris 29 20 Stoer Head Lighthouse 20 19 Chanonry & Ft. George 20 19 Armadale Pier, Skye 19 18 Kinghorn, Fife 10 9 Trumpan Church, Skye (trial) 6 3 Eigg 5 3 Macduff, Gellymill 5 5 Again, notice that many Burghead combined 4 3 sites with the highest Melness Church, Talmine 3 3 Spey Bay, SDC 3 3 harbour porpoise Torry Battery, Aberdeen 3 3 encounters are having St. John's Point, Caithness 2 2 multiple encounters in Strathy Point 2 2 Scalpay Lighthouse 1 1 some watches Minke whale encounters 1 2019 50 100 150 Number of encounters shown by circle size Minke Minke-pos Site encounters efforts Tiumpan combined 174 119 Kilt Rock, Skye 39 33 Melness Church 14 12 Stoer Head Lighthouse 11 11 Tiumpan head clearly sees the most Rodel, Harris 10 9 minke whales but all of our western Kinghorn, Fife 3 3 Armadale Pier, Skye 2 2 sites get a look in. Again, it looks like Macduff, Gellymill 2 2 some efforts saw conditions for multiple Burghead combined 1 1 minke encounters. There were fewer Scalpay Lighthouse 1 1 Strathy Point 1 1 sightings in the Moray Firth in 2019. Common dolphin encounters 1 2019 50 100 150 Number of encounters shown by circle size Common Dolphin Common- Site encounter pos efforts Tiumpan combined 74 44 Again, most common dolphin sightings happen on the west coast Kilt Rock, Skye 64 34 and seem to happen with multiple encounters per effort. Does Stoer Head 9 8 this suggest that there are great conditions on those days? Or Rhue Lighthouse 7 7 Rodel, Harris 4 4 widely spread groups coming in? We do have some casual Armadale Pier, sightings from more widely around this west coast region as well. Skye 2 2 Risso’s dolphin encounters 1 2019 50 100 150 Number of encounters shown by circle size Risso's dolphin Risso’s-pos Row Labels encounters efforts Risso’s are most commonly seen from Tiumpan combined 86 65 Stoer Head Tiumpan Head and these sightings led Lighthouse 4 4 to the WDC research team now Castle of Old Wick 1 1 conducting photo-ID and acoustic Kilt Rock, Skye 1 1 Strathy Point 1 1 studies through the winter months. Site specific data – notes about charts and graphs The following slides will give you numbers of efforts for each site and the numbers of positive efforts (when you saw a given species) Notes about graphs and charts: • Encounter rate (E/R) in these slides is comparing positive efforts to total efforts (whether you saw the species rather than how many times you saw said species).