It’s not often we get to hear heartening news about wildlife. However, 2023 was a historic year for marine conservation in the UK according to the Wildlife Trusts, with the creation of the first highly protected marine areas and a spike in sightings of whales and dolphins, tentatively suggesting that some species may be recovering and growing in numbers.
Measures to protect bluefin tuna (a fish that has returned from the brink of extinction) led to an increase in sightings, while in Cornwall there were 156 recorded sightings of Risso’s dolphins in 2023, compared with 45 in the previous year. A “super pod” of 350 common dolphins and 10 minke whales was even spotted off the Scottish coast, and an orca recorded in the sea three miles from the Yorkshire coastline — the first time one has been seen in the area since 2007. Humpback whales, basking sharks and fin whales have all been sighted, and the number of seal pups born increased by a third in some areas of the country compared with the previous year.
Here, we round up the Wildlife Trusts’ most glorious coastal nature reserves to spot fantastic winter wildlife.
I would thoroughly recommend the book “Rewilding the sea” for more of this kind of cautiously optimistic sea-based stuff. It also goes into a lot of detail about the details of how and why it’s happening.