Mirror meets friendly dolphin 'superpod' who've moved to 'Scarbados'

Within three minutes of parking my car on Marine Drive I’d seen 20 dolphins. But this wasn’t some exotic holiday hotspot. This was sunny Scarborough, in the north of England - or ‘Scarbados’ as it's playfully called.

It was once named the worst in the UK for seagull attacks but now it has a new attraction in town which has been boosting tourism and delighting visitors.

The town in North Yorkshire has been chosen as a favourite hangout for a ‘superpod’ of 225 bottlenose dolphins and their calves, thought to be the biggestin the UK. Currently in England there’s just one other dolphin population, off Cornwall to Sussex, which is believed to be much smaller at 40 individual dolphins.

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These northern bottlenose dolphins are also easy to spot as they are the biggest species in the world, at four metres and weighing half a tonne. Experts say they need the extra blubber to cope with the weather up north.

A researcher at the Sea Mammal Unit, Grant Ellis, based at the University of St Andrews, who has been studying this population, describes the dolphin’s ‘expansion’ into Scarborough as “fascinating”.

He's been tracking the bottlenose dolphins including Crumble, Captain Hook, Simone, Rheum, Soo, Bunsen and the eldest Runny Paint, aged 40, a female with a recognisable dorsal fin, who is at least 40 years old.

During my day trip to Scarborough to see what all the fuss was about I was amazed to park up and then see a huge pod gracefully moving up the coast in single file and just 100 yards from the harbour wall.

My guide for the day was Stuart Baines, a former legal executive, who has spent his retirement working hard to monitor these beautiful beasts. “It has enriched my life,” he told me, as he pointed out two distinctive dolphins, Toad and Mark, both disabled ‘who are slightly slower than the rest’ but happy and healthy otherwise.

“They are two special dolphins, Toad is disfigured with marks on his side but they get on well. They're just a bit slow sometimes and get left behind by the group.”

Stuart began monitoring porpoises 15 years ago and it was “very rare” to see dolphins but now it’s almost daily.

“It raises your spirits when you see them. We’ve got young calves in the area too now, so they will see it as their territory now. They will be here forever I suspect.”

We joined his pal, the skipper of the Becca-Marie, Stuart Ford, who runs wildlife safaris up and down the coast, to try and get a closer look. The former fisherman started his wildlife safaris with his dad after watching a David Attenborough documentary and realising they had all the wildlife he was studying on their doorstep.

The skipper told me: “They just love boats and when I see a pod of dolphins, I’m buzzing. It’s magical. When you see the dolphins breaching to the side of the boat, it lifts my day. We did a big three hour trip on Saturday to Bempton where you’ve got Puffins and Gannets and then on our way back we came across this huge pod, a ‘superpod’ of dolphins.

“We just stopped the boat and all 50 boats went towards us and underneath us, you could see them swimming under the boat, when the water was gin clear. They were just jumping out.

“It was stunning, everyone was ‘wow’. You’re not travelling abroad to see them, you're coming to little sunny Scarborough and everything is here. It’s beautiful.”.

Stuart, 55 and his dad Ronnie, 77, were lobstermen for most of their careers but seven years ago they were inspired to change their career path by David Attenborough.

“We’ve been fishermen all our lives watching Gannets diving. Then there was this David Attenborough documentary about Gannet diving and watching that we thought ‘we’ve got that at Flamborough or Bempton (Cliffs), all within a 15 mile radius and we’ve got seals.

“Everything is here. We’ve got it all.”

As he was talking to me, we arrived to see the grey seals, which have also seen their population explode a few miles from the beaches at Scarborough.

As we cut the engines their little heads started popping up all around us, like meerkats. The skipper says they think we are a fishing boat and are expecting extra snacks.

“They’re like Whack-a-mole. I think they look like dogs without ears, I love the seals, they’re great,” he said.

His dad, Ronnie, sat behind the wheel, said; “I got too old for pulling nets so this suits me fine. This is the best job of my life. “

After a hopeful start to my morning I was hoping for a closer look at the dolphin population but our first trip came up empty.

“I don’t advertise it as a dolphin trip because you just cannot say for sure, with the seals, they’re always here.

“We also obey the rules, no longer than 15 minutes and we have to move on and let them go on their way.”

Then after sea fog stopped play, for all the boats in Scarborough, we spotted several dolphins again from Marine Drive again, where crowds of a hundred have been seen to gather to watch the dolphins play and where there’s a new SeaWatch centre.

Among them are spotters, part of a ‘dolphin army’ of wildlife lovers in Scarborough, which includes boat captains and locals, who all monitor the dolphins.

They have their own WhatsApp group with more than 250 members, for sightings from Staithes to Withernsea, for information to pass on to a huge study being carried out by experts.

This study is being carried out by the Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU) in the Northeast and Yorkshire.

The Citizen Science project is called 'Citizen Fins' and is being carried out by the Sea Mammal Research Unit and The University of Aberdeen, who are monitoring this growing and expanding pod. They are logging the sightings with the help of the public.

Since 1989 they have been carrying out research into Scotland's East Coast bottlenose dolphin population alongside the University of Aberdeen.

But now as the population has been increasing and with dolphins being regularly spotted further south, their research is also expanding.

When the study started, there were around 130 animals in the Moray Firth, Scotland in the early 90’s.

Researcher Grant Ellis said: “The population in Scotland has been increasing, we now know there are at least 225 animals using the east coast of Scotland in recent years”

“My PhD project is to investigate the potential range expansion into the northeast and Yorkshire.

“We know that animals from the East Coast Scotland population are going as far as Flamborough Head and Bridlington Bay. We can identify the animals individually from naturally occurring markings on the dorsal fins and effectively track their movements through photographs.

"The Sea Watch Foundation, and Whale and Dolphin Conservation groups also record sightings in this area. It could be they are going further south, so it’s really important that people report sightings and submit photos so that we can understand how far these animals are travelling.

“This is hopefully good news, it could mean the animals are finding new areas of habitat as the population increases and suggests there are suitable prey down here for them.

“It’s really encouraging that they are being seen on a regular basis and in quite large group sizes. It’s been wonderful to see some of those animals I’ve seen previously in Scotland pop up down here.

“Some of these dolphins are older than I am such as Runny Paint, she was first recorded in 1989 and has some distinctive white markings on her dorsal fin. She’s very recognisable even from land.

“These dolphins are the largest of their species in the world, They can measure up to four metres long and weigh 450 kilos. Because they are at the northern extreme and in colder waters they have thicker blubber.

“But despite their size, if they want to disappear, they can just vanish.

“I just think it’s a brilliant news story, from speaking to local people in Scarborough they were not often seeing bottlenose dolphins here until about six years ago.”

It was this dolphin lovers’ WhatsApp group that helped us locate the pod again, just outside the harbour, apparently home from their day trip out.

It was just us on the Becca-Marie boat and a small pirate ship, treated to this awesome view.

Catching up with tourists on the pirate ship when we got back on dry land they told how the dolphins were reacting to the children up front, who’d started trying to talk ‘dolphin’ squeaking and squealing.

Robyn MacKay, 31, his partner Elliott Mackay, 34, and Harris, seven, from Edinburgh, were still thrilled to see the dolphins during their holiday.

“It was very surreal,” Elliot said with Robyn adding: “We were not expecting to see any, it was amazing. We saw a wee family of six.

With Harris showing me the impersonation of a dolphin he was doing on the boat and saying: “I thought it was so cool.”

Nathan Hooper, 51 and his partner Rosemary Singlehurst, 44, from Cambridgeshire were also surprised to see the pod.

“It definitely made our holiday,” Nathan said and explained how all the children were at the front making dolphin noises.

Stuart Baines says it’s not just dolphins who are finding the North Sea off Scarborough attractive.

“Fishermen who have worked this area their whole career are now seen Minke whales and basking sharks. We’ve even had humpback whales spotted four times last year.

“It’s a real boost for the town and people are coming here out of season too because of the wildlife.

“People don’t have to go to the Caribbean to see dolphins, we've got them here in Scarborough.”

Details on how the public can contribute their photos to the study can be found at https://citizenfins.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk