3 White beaked dolphins rescued in the Hebrides

White beaked dolphins used to be common around the Hebrides, but have moved away as the waters have warmed. Credit British Divers Marine Life Rescue.

July 2009. British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) were alerted by members of the public that 3 White-beaked dolphins had stranded on North Uist. BDMLR medic Martin Vaci arrived on the scene to discover that the three dolphins were all adults, but there were 2 young dolphins still swimming nearby. Martinn Vaci, helped by local Fire Brigade Volunteers, SSPCA and local residents managed to refloat the three stranded dolphins, and although one was thought to have restranded it was just in shallow water and swan off unaided. BDMLR hopes that the adults and youngsters have been reunited and were just caught out by a quick out going tide and by the geography of the bay.
White-beaked dolphins are a cold water species that were previously much more common off the coast of Scotland, but have almost completely disappeared from the West Coast in the last few years, with climate change the most likely cause. White-beaked dolphins are found only in the shallower waters of the northern North Atlantic and, until the late 1990s, the West Coast of Scotland had some of the highest numbers of this species in Europe. This cold-water species had been replaced by the common dolphin, a species found only in warmer waters. This change has been accompanied by an increase in water temperatures around the UK of up to 0.4 C per decade since 1981.

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