The Thames Estuary is home to seals, harbour porpoises and sometimes even whales and dolphins. From historic records it seems that Europe’s smallest whale, the harbour porpoise, used to be a common sight in central London. Due to extreme pollution, harbour porpoises and fish declined in the River Thames, which was declared as biologically dead in the 1950s. However, the Thames recently won awards for its good ecological status, and it is hoped that aquatic life will continue to return. With that in mind, the Song of the Whale team decided to collect visual and acoustic data for marine mammals – especially harbour porpoise during its trips up and back to St Katharine Dock, London during March / April. On the trip up the Thames two weeks ago we had no sightings or detections, however as Song of the Whale heads off to its home port of Ipswich today, the team will be up on the A frame looking out once again in the hope to see UK’s smallest whale in our biggest city.
Check out our time-lapse video, above, of SOTW coming up the River Thames.
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.