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Dolphins captured for captivity in Taiji. Image: Hans Peter Roth

Loved and killed – whales and dolphins in Japan

Protests and criticism from outside Japan in response to the slaughter of whales and dolphins...
Irrawaddy dolphin

Helping fishers protect dolphins in Sarawak, Borneo

Fishing nets are bad news for dolphins and porpoises, so we're working with local fishers...
Dolphin watching from Chanonry Point, Scotland. Image: WDC/Charlie Phillips

Discovering inner peace – whale and dolphin watching and mental wellbeing

Guest blog If you've ever seen whales or dolphins in the wild, you'll know that...
Whale tail

An ocean of hope

In a monumental, jaw-dropping demonstration of global community, the nations of the world made history...
The infamous killing cove at Taiji, Japan

Why the Taiji dolphin hunt can never be justified

Supporters of the dolphin slaughter in Japan argue that killing a few hundred dolphins every...
Image: Peter Linforth

Tracking whales from space will help us save them

Satellite technology holds one of the keys to 21st century whale conservation, so we're exploring...
Fishers' involvement is crucial. Image: WDC/JTF

When porpoises and people overlap

We're funding a project in Hong Kong that's working with fishing communities to help save...

Mindful conservation – why we need a new respect for nature

'We should look at whales and dolphins as the indigenous people of the seas -...

2017 Sightings in Scotland

Update by Emma Steel

It has been an extremely exciting couple of weeks for cetacean sightings here in Scotland, with a few less common species popping in to say hello, and a total of 12 cetacean species recorded in 2017 so far! The Shorewatch team spent a week up in Caithness and had some fantastic sightings of Orca. These individuals are members of the Icelandic orca population, who travel down to Scotland in May every year. This year they were spotted as far south as Peterhead! 

It has been minke madness across the coastline, with sightings in the Moray Firth of whales breaching, and on a few occasions lots of these baleen whales were spotted from Tiumpan head in the Outer Hebrides. One of our volunteers, Janet Marshall, also sighted a pygmy sperm whale from Tiumpan, a very rare and exciting sighting for her! Not a lot is known about this species, and most information has come from strandings data.