Dolphin Sightings 2019 - Channel Islands

Bottle-nose dolphin - Spring 2019 at the Ecrehous

At Jersey Seafaris, we have been recording dolphin sightings since 2013. For the last 3yrs with the help of the Société Jersiaise app ‘Epi Collect 5’, these sightings have been geographically logged. The app has recently collected over 1500 sightings of large marine animals. Over 1250 of these sightings are Bottle-nose Dolphin, which are most regularly sighted marine mammal of Seafaris trips.

Towards the end of each season we gather all of the sighting information and take a look to see if there have been any major changes or trends. This year, on the Seafaris vessels, we had 308 separate sightings, again a huge amount suggesting more dolphin in our area. There was a slight decrease in sightings this year but that could well be down to the poor weather and choppier sea conditions making it harder to spot the dolphins!

% CHANCE OF DOLPHIN SIGHTINGS ON SEAFARIS

As you see from the above, a 35% chance of seeing dolphins is a decent chance and certainly shows a big upward trend in recent years - hopefully we will see the dolphin numbers to continue to rise!

So… let us ask the question again… which is the best Seafari for spotting dolphin?

% CHANCE OF SEEING DOLPHINS PER SEAFARI / CHARTER

France has topped the charts this year, followed by the Minquiers in 2nd and the Ecrehous in 3rd place. Most of the French Seafaris go past the Ecrehous anyway and being a longer distance it just increases the chances of spotting. We certainly tend to get most of our sightings just off the north east or south east coasts.

Below are the sightings of the Ecrehous area from the app.
PLEASE NOTE: The total numbers in the key are full the whole Channel Island area.

From observing the image, it is clear that the area around the L’Ecreviere sandbank (bottom right corner) is a good place for spotting dolphins. This is due to the bank providing shelter for sand eels, which themselves will attract other fish including mackerel, pollack and bass. Dolphins aren’t fussy eaters, the only fish we’ve observed them leaving well alone was a marbled electric ray which can deliver a shock of 80 volts!

Below is a Bottle-nose dolphin about to swallow a bass in the channel at the Ecrehous taken this season.

Whilst our sightings are usually dolphin and porpoise, we have had a few unusual sightings this year.
Blue fin tuna have been entering Channel Island waters for a number of years but it is only this year that we had the pleasure of spotting them from our Seafaris vessels on a number of trips, more so towards Sark and off our north and west coasts.. Fully mature bluefin tuna can reach 2-2.5m in length and weight up to 250kg and will occasionally breach the water when feeding, quite a spectacle.