Pilot Whales in the River Thames!

Join me on my most surprising wildlife encounter of the year as I film pilot whales just a few miles downstream of London in the River Thames. I'm here on a very windy Tilbury Fault and I'm right on the edge of the River Thames here. You might well see some boats going past behind me and I'm actually looking for a pod of pilot whales. I wasn't here long before I spotted one and it turns out there's loads of them. I'm here with Nick Lay and you can check out his, I'll put a link to his YouTube channel down below. But it's very windy so a lot of the footage we're filming is a bit shaky so I'll have no doubt tried to sort that out in editing. They were a long way off to start with, I reckon about a mile or so away sitting in the middle of the river halfway between Coal House Fault and Tilbury Fault but as you'll see they didn't stay that far away. But every so often we get a bit worried because a big ship goes through but the whales so far seem to be avoiding it. Having avoided that first ship they then seemed to move away from the even bigger container ship. Another much smaller vessel seemed to come in close to the whales possibly keeping an eye on them. Not just because of the large ships moving past or because they were following the incoming tide, we realised the pilot whales are now coming in a bit closer. I filmed in slow motion to capture the action but also to reduce the effect of the camera shaking in the wind. I made sure to zoom out and capture the bizarre scene of a pod of ocean-going pilot whales in front of grazing horses. These long finned pilot whales are normally found in deeper water and are a nomadic species moving around in pods that can number up to a thousand. But typically they are usually less than 50 and there were certainly double figures here in this pod. Despite their name they're actually a large species of dolphin They can grow up to 7.5 meters long diving down to up to 600 meters and they seem to be diving for food here although the water is only 15 meters deep at most in this part of the Thames. As they came upstream they ended up closer and I got better and better footage. One of the whales was swimming on its back for a while showing its pectoral fins which handily showed that these were indeed long finned pilot whales not the short finned pilot whales It was quite surreal seeing these whales with Gravesend as a backdrop. Every so often the whale that was doing the backstroke would start spy hopping sticking its head out the water to look around. It even stuck its head out the water upside down before spy hopping and splashing down into the water again. I can only assume it was playing. The last time a pod of pilot whales came into the Thames it unfortunately led to at least some of them dying. So it was quite concerning when they seemed to start moving up river again at some speed. Thankfully they soon turned around and started drifting downstream with the tide and they started hunting in front of us again. The backstroke specialist was still swimming along with its fins out the water and spy hopping every so often. They seemed to be actively swimming around and diving likely hunting for food and I got some nice footage of two coming towards me and they raised their flukes as they dived down and another that came high enough out the water to see its head clearly. There was clearly a mix of ages in this pod and I managed to capture a mother and calf a few times. I was particularly happy with this last slow motion shot which shows the calf very nicely. There were some larger individuals too with their clearly bigger dorsal fins visible at the surface. One of the shots you really want to get when filming whales and dolphins is the blow which is when they blast water out of their blowhole so they can breathe at the surface. The blowhole of a pole is of course their nose, well nostril at least, that has migrated up to the top of the head through evolution so they can breathe more efficiently when swimming through the water. Most of the footage in this video has been slowed down but I did get some of the pilot whales that I filmed in real time to show how fast they actually move. At one point a spy hopping youngster lifted itself high enough out the water to clearly see the white anchor shaped markings that they have on their underside. Some individuals seemed to sit at the surface for a while like this one did until others came up to it and seemed to nudge it and it eventually slipped under the water when the last whale swam right up to it. I also managed to get a bit of footage of two youngsters that seemed to be spy hopping right next to each other. While they were still relatively close I just tried to get as much footage of the action as I could. As a large ship approached a couple of the whales ended up rather close to its bow seeming to dive at the last minute. I don't think they would have been hit and you could clearly see some of the pod swimming past the ship and then the whole pod seemed to appear behind the ship once it passed. Sadly while editing this video I heard what was believed to be a dead pilot whale was spotted nearby in the Thames so unfortunately one may have died possibly by a ship strike but this hasn't been confirmed. Thankfully the pod seemed to be heading out with the tide and as the sun set my last sighting was further east and downstream than I'd seen them before so hopefully they make it out to sea safely. Finally I pointed my camera at the moon and I said to the person next to me last time I did this a bird flew in front of it. I didn't watch the screen the whole time so you can imagine my surprise when I played it back when I got home and saw this. It was obviously my lucky day. Thanks for watching.