Tom Mustill

Writer & nature film maker

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

HOW TO SPEAK WHALE IS OUT! 📘🐳

To celebrate I tried to summarise it in 60s 🤯

[Sussex Dolphin Project 🐬 @SussexDolphin]

Humpback Whale adventure in Sussex 🐋

The team at Sussex Dolphin Project and our friend @tommustill spent 2 HOURS with a humpback whale just off Seaford last week. 🤩

Tom has been very busy developing this video of what was a magical experience.

🎥 https://t.co/mMQgL2kfHC
🧵

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

We know more about some of the whales and dolphins in the seas of Antarctic than we do about those that live in the channel.

“THE SUSSEX HUMPBACK" https://t.co/exkG2ePfDC

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

@SussexDolphin https://t.co/OTcVWQuTDS

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

Here’s a little video I made of something I never expected to witness in the channel! 🐋 Last week I got a last minute message from Lloyd @SussexDolphin asking if I’d like to jump on a boat to see if we could find & ID the humpback seen off Hastings...
https://t.co/OTcVWQuTDS

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

@whalesorg @WorldCetacean @sascampaigns @happyhumpback @HugoSAS @GeorgeMonbiot @lucysiegle

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

Get the Sussex Dolphin Project a dedicated research vessel! (they have to rent them or borrow them off friendly captains like Kurt Lander at the moment). And if you live in the UK - go to the sea and be part of the story - witness, learn, explore and protect.

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

Subtropical and artic species converging to feed in our seas and be killed by supertrawlers, from polluted orcas and breaching humpbacks. It is a messy, scary, encouraging, huge story, reflecting the ocean as a whole and the UK sits at a marine crossroads to understand it.

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

I’ve been interviewing scientists , fishers and first responders about what they think is going on - from walrus pleasuring themselves beneath Jamie’s Italian in Scarborough, to mass strandings of pilot whales

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

- in the last year I've seen tuna bait balls turn the surface white and rock our boat on a calm day, been surrounded underwater by a hundred common dolphins, surfed with a minke whale and watched puffins zoom underwater

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

This sighting is part of a much bigger story of the UK seas and the changing animal lives we are witnessing there

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

I am wondering - is something like this what we are seeing in the UK, young whales coming to return to where their ancestors were slaughtered a whale generation ago?

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

30 years ago humpbacks were rare off both US coasts, now watching whales of all kinds is pretty much guaranteed if you set off from Monterey Bay and humpbacks breach in front of the Statue of Liberty

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

We know more about some of the whales and dolphins in Antartica than those off Sussex.

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

and allows us to know how many there are, some species are declining and others like humpbacks seem to be rebounding (but also vulnerable to marine heatwaves).

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

Normally when lone cetaceans turn up in unusual places, like busy sea lanes, it is bad news for them, but in general humpbacks have been resurgent globally. Because of scientists, whale-watchers and citizen scientists we can ID them which tells us who they are..

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

After two hours we finally got a good sight and recording of its tail - I sent it to Ted at @happyhumpback as we drove home and he confirmed it was a new whale - one not ID’d before.

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

Was it feeding underwater stirring up the bottom (70-90ft depth)? It was manoevring so tightly I sometimes wondered if I was seeing two whales, surfacing as it was pointing in different directions.

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

Atlantic humpbacks tend to have light undersides to their tail flukes and dorsal fins, & it showed us as it breached and pec slapped spectacularly. But largely it seemed intent on staying in a small patch of sea, turning back on itself & surfacing regularly between short dives

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

It seemed in good nick, with nothing entangled and decent body condition and healthy exuberant behaviour and breathing, distinctive white notch ahead of its dorsal fin (old entanglement scar?).

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

Nothing but grey for three hours, hallucinating blows and whaley shapes, then I saw a dark shape dead ahead! For the next two hours we (carefully at a distance) observed a beautiful lone humpback.

[Tom Mustill @tommustill]

It was a misty freezing morning but Capt. Kurt was cheerful as we set out of Brighton Marina and showed us waters full of thick schools of baitfish on his sonar. We stationed ourselves around the vessel staring out, bundled up with cold noses and fingertips.