IDENTIFICATION GUIDE:Whales and dolphins of the UK

There’s nothing more exciting than a dolphin riding your bow-wave, or a whale breaching... but how can you identify the species? Sailor, photographer and wildlife surveyor Genevieve Leaper tells us more

- Genevieve Leaper

One spring day when I was a teenager, we were sailing across Poole Bay as we had many times before. All of a sudden, an unremarkable day turned into a special one as three dolphins came rushing towards us to play around the bow. I abandoned the tiller to my father and rushed forward to lie on the foredeck, leaning over as far as I dared and laughing with sheer delight to watch them bow-riding.

They were bottlenose dolphins, though I didn’t know it then. We’d never seen any before and I didn’t know much about dolphins. And I certainly never imagined it was possible to see whales in British waters.

Since then, in many years of sailing and marine surveys around the UK, I have seen hundreds of dolphins and porpoises and more than a few whales. Even so, my tally of 13 species of cetaceans, as they are collectively known, is only around half the total number to have been recorded.

But I still remember those first dolphins and I never get tired of watching them.

Whales and dolphins can seem impossible to identify at first but it becomes easier once you know what features to look for.

The first challenge is to see them in the first place, after all these are animals that spend most of their time underwater and often show little when they do surface.

A cetacean surfacing may appear as a dark or shiny object depending on the light. Other cues are splashes or a wave going the ‘wrong’ way. The first thing I noticed on that early encounter in Poole Bay was a small breaking wave where there shouldn’t have been one.