I’ve been in an emotional relationship with Wales for about 15 years now. Moving from the US state of Georgia – I was three and my brother was six – our former-naval-officer parents were keen to expand our world. Looking back, I love them for it. We are the family that takes the stairs. Much to the alarm of some peers, our summer holidays featured tents, zips, walking boots and misty summits. Also, soup. Key highlights of our Welsh camping series include repairing a broken tent pole’s elastic with strands of my hair, and employing all pots and pans to save a leaking tent during a particularly miserable attack of sinusitis. Despite dearest Mum vowing never to camp again, they really were good times.
It was a Tuesday. It felt good to have a train to catch on a Tuesday and for that train to be heading (eventually) to Pembrokeshire – the jade bracelet of Wales I had heard so much about but never visited.
A far cry from squatting in the tussocks of Breney Common, my route headed north before bending west – the plan being to spend the rest of the week feeling up the Welsh coastline and (hopefully) finishing somewhere near Snowdonia. I was running unfashionably late and caught my bike in the automatic doors separating the train carriages, an oversight caused by missing the designated bike carriage. After failed attempts at elbowing buttons and getting very cross – the doors suddenly released. My handlebars flipped the front wheel around, smacking into a passenger’s leg. Apologising profusely for failing to have the situation in hand, I was met with a glare from said passenger that could have shattered time itself. A confident start.
I had fallen into a simple routine. Board train, wrestle with bike, savour the journey and hope specific animals may dare to show up. My bike crashed loudly against the racks at every jostle, adding a metallic edge to a green and pleasant ride as we raced through the Exe Valley into Somerset. Dairy cows drifted between fields, and I thought of beavers at every fallen branch or cluster of sticks as we followed the river. I found myself slumped diagonally across a window seat with my legs wide apart like some guy at a bar, drinking in the blur outside. I was very content. This train was the line home during my university years in Bristol. During those brilliant, bizarre years, I would experience a genuine buoyancy knowing that the sea, the moors, my own bed (also laundry services, proper meals) and the absence of an alcoholic agenda were waiting just over an hour away. This train line has accommodated most if not all versions of Sophie over the past five years.
I was like many children – horses, dolphins and the sea ruled my world. During the early years of primary school, our teachers asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up. We are so much more at ease with ambition at that age. I wrote ‘underwater photographer’ and, in later years, ‘pilot’, before climaxing during an especially awkward phase of gelling my hair and being desperate to legally change my name to Janet (genuinely) when I put ‘guinea pig breeder’. My bedroom rocked a cetacean vibe right into my teens. I branded every available surface with fin and fluke. Arm, napkin, exercise book, toilet roll – all would be adorned with the same underwater scene: novelty wave at the top, seaweed and rocks at the bottom.
My ocean was busy with life at all levels: dolphins, whales, schools of fish, an octopus, starfish, sceptical rays; all surrounded by tiny circles, which I think were meant to be bubbles (from some unchartered hydrothermal vent, perhaps?) A scuba diver surveyed the scene, always from the right-hand side. She was never that much smaller than the giant whale coming up for air next to her because, in this world, we exist on a level.
But it never occurred to me to include a harbour porpoise in this medley. It just wasn’t on my mind in the same way that dolphins and other whales were. We didn’t learn about porpoises in school. They did not feature in any bedtime stories. A real shame, as they’re one of the ocean’s smallest mammals and Britain’s smallest cetacean (the group of aquatic mammals that includes whales and dolphins).
No more than 2 metres long, a harbour porpoise weighs about the same as a human teenager. It’s a similar blue-grey colour to the bottlenose dolphins we know, but with a more rounded, blunt head. Like me during the Janet/guinea pig breeder phase, the harbour porpoise is famously shy – most often seen travelling in groups of two to three around coastal habitats. Its apparent omission from pop culture and listing as a highly protected ‘priority species’ for UK waters is what drew me to its story, along with the fact its Latin name Phocoena phocoena means ‘pig fish’. Its characteristic ‘chuff’ as it surfaces for air inspired its fond nickname of the ‘puffing pig’.
Our grasp of ‘the ocean’ has developed at a similar pace to our understanding of the human brain. Both remain devoid of, yet are the compass to, a richer understanding of the planet and our place in it. Understanding the ocean is understanding ourselves and our survival. With its immense peaks and troughs, the deep sea could be an analogue to the abyss of the human subconscious – the unmapped mountain ranges of our mind. We have explored less than 5 per cent of the ocean and charted only 80 out of a possible 180 areas of the human cerebral cortex. But we know we are smart. We’ve innovated, flexed our ego, upgraded – but to what end?
Cast your mind back to 180,000 years ago. You are in a dim, cool cave off South Africa’s Pinnacle Point coast, and it’s dinner time. Last night it was Hypoxis, yellow stargrass roasted in ashes – again. Wooden sticks litter the firepit, your body aches with the labour of uprooting these fibrous rhizomes from the hillside. A bowlful of its white flesh offers about the same energy as a very large banana, tasting sweet if a little nutty. But hey, tonight is different. For tonight colludes an affair with barnacle, giant periwinkle and whelk – an amuse-bouche of crustacean and gastropod. At last, the language of food adopts a new meaning. The prospect of this new, fishy nutrition promises to make you nimble and strong. Tonight weds man and sea.
This version of events recounts the supposed dawn of the human obsession with fish. It was 2007 when a group of paleoanthropologists from Arizona State University led an excavation of a high, dry cave at Pinnacle Point. A decent portion of shellfish was uncovered, dating back to nearly 180,000 years ago. Not quite fish and chips, but the discovery ebbed the earliest known human seafood meal by 40,000 years. The researchers identified some barnacles as being harvested from whales. Now I can’t imagine that empire building and trade routes were on the average hominid mind back then, but somehow it all started to happen soon after. Curiosity killed the ocean. Jonah, Medusa, sirens, superstition, merpeople, Davy Jones, the omen of a cormorant – even I still mumble, ‘Red sky at night, sailor’s delight’ (cheers, Pops!) – the human romance with the waves is deeply woven into the tapestry of civilisation. And yet we’ve used and abused. Drilled, overfished, polluted. Our current relationship status: as complicated as a sushi conveyor belt.
Highways of buddleia1 grinned purple for miles along the edge of the track, assuming identity in abandon. Swansea Bay opened like a glossy magazine to my left. For more than 60 years, Port Talbot has entwined with the steel industry, employing up to 20,000 workers in the 1960s. Yet falling demand and brutal Chinese competition have rendered this historic site nearly obsolete. Tiny terraced houses remained braced against the rest of Swansea Bay. Industrial, ebony shafts rose above it all, like giant cigarettes.
Swansea station was sunny and predictable. A high-rise block of flats was mid-facelift, masked in a lilac construction plastic with two enormous cranes sticking up like antennae. Five herring gulls circled noisily above. This did not feel like Wales. When I’m in Wales, I exist (on the whole) in perpetual damp. I am undoubtedly also experiencing wonderful, carefree times, of course, truly wild – some of the best. But inevitably damp and under canvas. The sun gained confidence, and I thought of the sea. I could almost smell it.
Through the train window, the open sea collided with the marshes and massive estuary of the River Loughor, blending with the 450-acre (182-hectare) birder wonderland of Llanelli Wetland Centre. Beaches tinged gold; headlands flushed green, the Gower Peninsula unfurled like a new leaf as we raced west. On a map, the outline of the peninsula assumes a reasonable bellend, the very tip beyond the headland wonderfully named ‘Worm’s Head’. But (phallus aside), here lies a village of world-class beaches, saltwater marshes, heathland, limestone grassland, ancient woodland, sand dunes, rocky shore, Iron Age forts, medieval castles, above-average surf and well-above-average coastal path. This 19-mile stretch of Arcadia was Britain’s first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and rightfully so.
Carmarthen Bay (Bae Caerfyrddin) reminded me of Cornwall’s Camel Estuary near Padstow, both a similar weight of golds and teals, while waders picked their way along the shore like fossil hunters. Grand white houses and cosy towns. A golf course had clumps of yellow ragwort dotting the fringes of polished lawns. Beaming at their permission to stay, I was just thinking how, if viewed from above, the ragwort would look like giant dandelions when a 22-spot ladybird climbed onto the table and mapped the length of my index finger. One of three types of yellow ladybird in the UK, it marched along my finger eagerly like a tiny cadet, surveying this fleshy mass for food, shelter or mating opportunities, legs and antennae reading the scene like morse code. Upon realising the futility of this operation, it moved on elsewhere, and I lost sight of it.
I arrived at Fishguard & Goodwick station on a day that forecast serious warmth. Desperate to stretch my legs, I mounted my bike and freewheeled towards the sea, arriving almost immediately at my meeting place. The coast path above the beach stitched the headland like a suture. Oystercatchers triumphed over traffic. I had a couple of hours to kill before I was due to meet with Holly, a marine biologist and project officer for conservation charity Sea Trust Wales. I bought a sandwich and settled on a rock overlooking Goodwick Sands beach. Sitting high enough to swing my legs from the wall, I watched a young boy. It took me a moment to realise that he was singing to himself as he turned over rocks, prodding the mud with his fingers, bringing them up to his nose for a good sniff. He busied himself assembling his castle of riches on the edge of the tide, with the care of someone beyond his years.
I had told Holly to look out for an unkempt trio of girl, bike and backpack in the car park. In a red car, she pulled up beside the Ocean Lab. Holly is the kind of person you realise you like very much, even before she says hello. Bare-faced, bright and with a soft Surrey accent, there was a certainty about her that soothed me. Being just a week into the easing of national lockdown restrictions, Wales remained hushed, and the Ocean Lab and its public aquarium were closed. Dim lighting filled empty tanks – the contrast quite gloomy. ‘We had quite the task of gathering all the species from tanks and releasing them back into the sea when lockdown started!’ laughed Holly. ‘Why should they stay indoors just because we had to?’ We like Holly.
Leading up to that day, Holly had teased that on a ‘good day’ with the right conditions, harbour porpoises could be seen from the coast path at Strumble Head. She had invited me to join her on one of her daily porpoise surveys, and I played excitable intern as she handed me a pair of large binoculars and led the way. In pre-pandemic times, car-loads of Sea Trust Wales staff and volunteers would set up stations at four different local sites each day – Strumble Head, Fishguard Harbour, Ramsay Sound and Pen Anglas – to collect vital photographic data as part of the Porpoise Photo-ID Project (try saying that after a few). But, as society stopped, so did the surveys. ‘It was really painful,’ Holly admitted. ‘We’ve surveyed consistently for the past three years, and we need this data. So, as the restrictions have lifted, we locals have resumed our surveys – thank God.’
The lanes leading up to the headland had echoes of Dartmoor. Tiny stone holiday cottages pocked the hills. It was as though the North Devon and Cornish coastlines had conspired (with the blessing of Bodmin Moor) to have a secret child. A ferry chugged away to Ireland. An ellipsis of gannets headed home to Grassholm Island. There was so much sky I felt like I was walking into a fish-eye lens – the further my entry, the wider it became. We settled on a spongy area of grass on a flat ledge away from the coast path. Mustard-coloured lichen whispered across the rocks. Pollinators bustled about their coastal abode. The air was fresh, seasoned like salted butter – and I wanted to spread it all on a bagel and eat it. ‘Special place, isn’t it,’ smiled Holly. ‘There’s a peregrine nesting in the rocks over there. We even get adders – and we’re just below the car park! Every time I come here, there’s something different.’
A man with an enormous camera lens beamed at us as we arrived at our survey spot. ‘Alright, Rob?’ Holly greeted him like she was pulling up a barstool – I clocked ‘the nod’ of fellow nature lovers. ‘Any luck?’ she asked.
‘Gah!’ Rob cleared his throat behind an equally enormous beard, ‘Just the usual I’d say!’ in a thick Welsh lilt. ‘Won’t see any porpoises up here ‘til high tide now, but she’s a beauty, mind!’ He grinned at the sky, his beard wobbling with the wind. Hoisting his tripod on his shoulder, off he went up the hill.
I was on the cusp of quizzing Holly about porpoises and such when our eardrums were scoured like a pan. Had this happened the year before, this sound could have passed off as a crow with severe laryngitis. However, having since been blessed with the friendship and know-how of some talented bird-y people, before I knew what was happening, I shouted ‘CHOOUUUGHS!’ (pronounced ‘chuffs’). Two large, ebony-black birds rolled in front of us, jumping a jive on the rocks. Pepper-red legs and a long, curved bill to match. These birds have mastered flight and survival beyond all the corvid2 cousins. It was between 1860 and 1900 when people suddenly realised that they’d very much like to collect the increasingly rare chough’s eggs and join the ‘collector’ hype of the Victorian era, please. Although the study of egg collections now enables extensive understanding of the early naturalist expeditions, bird evolution and human culture (the Natural History Museum has archived more than a million individual eggs), this along with the trapping and shooting of choughs plunged this jolly bird into extinction over much of England during the 1900s.
It’s been a turbulent ride since, thanks to the intensification of farming and abandonment of grazing, dung and insect food on the coastal slopes it loves. But, thanks to an army of good people, it is now afforded the highest degree of legal protection. Numbers are recovering in most coastal regions of the UK – including here on Strumble Head, where there are two breeding pairs. Watching them flash their wings and land with a bounce, feathered fingers outstretched, these choughs lacked the sinister witch doctor vibes of the jackdaw and assumed a more comedic role. Their unmistakable ‘chee-oowwww’ call caught on the breeze as if amused at their recent U-turn of fortune.
I looked across the sea, which yawned ahead of us. Water upwelled into soft little circles called ‘boils’, like a reluctant jacuzzi. Generally speaking, the more boils, the lower the tide. I lost count of the boils. The tide was very low. Harbour porpoises rarely feed at low tide. More likely, the ones here feed at mid-tide. Holly had no problem reminding me that I had picked the worst possible time to see harbour porpoises. We laughed for the sake of it – the sort of ‘funny ha-ha’ type, devoid of all hilarity. I remained optimistic as ever but typically have more luck with pretty much anything else than I do with wildlife performing on-demand.
I had seen harbour porpoises before, though. A few years ago, alone in Falmouth with time to spare, I treated myself to a boat trip. It was one of those days where the Cornish sea and sky adopted the same shade of slate, and the lack of sun flare invited perfect cetacean spotting. A few cormorants later, and the faintest glimmer of a mother and calf wrinkled the surface. As shy as the November sun, their dorsal fins smooth and blunt, their bodies bashful but sturdy.
Often mistaken for each other, the porpoise and the dolphin share many qualities – but bravado is not one. Your average dolphin is like that guy in the office. Tailored, clean-shaven, a healthy 6 feet 4 inches. A 10-metre wake of Paco Rabanne. Loves a good laugh, babe. Can be an occasional arse. And definitely wouldn’t call you back. Whereas our harbour porpoise is the cute guy in the corner who enjoys knitwear and helps clean up after the Christmas party. And only after the third pub quiz do you find out that he studied at Harvard, has three PhDs and would most likely make you a mixtape.
Such social reluctance from the harbour porpoise has made them notoriously difficult to study. Despite it being one of the most common and savvy mammals in global seas, we regrettably know more about the anatomy of a Kardashian than we do the nuances that chaperone our porpoises through life. It’s nobody’s fault – it’s just one of those things. And, ironies wonderfully intact, it’s this enigma that spurred the idea of a camera becoming one of the porpoise’s greatest modern allies.
Sea Trust Wales’ focus on the harbour porpoise began on a dark February evening in 1996. The huge Liberian oil tanker, the Sea Empress, ground to a halt on St Ann’s Head rocks in nearby Milford Haven – one of the UK’s most frantic and largest energy ports. A gross assault of 72,000 tonnes of crude oil and 480 tonnes of fuel poured into these waters. The 5-mile oil slick polluted 200 kilometres of Pembrokeshire National Park coastline; it remains one of Britain’s most serious oil spills. Amid the anguish of rescuing more than 7,000 oil-bound birds, it became apparent that despite large marine mammals remaining relatively untouched by the disaster, there wasn’t a vested local authority to respond solely to the conservation of marine wildlife in general. After being born in the spare room of Holly’s boss in 2003, 17 years, an Ocean Lab, aquarium and 40 volunteers later, Sea Trust Wales’ Porpoise Photo-ID Project remains one of just a handful of organisations around the world collecting data on porpoises in this way.
While recording dangerous and thrilling dives, legendary French explorer Jacques Cousteau revealed the life within the sea to millions from the Second World War onwards. His 1953 book Silent World cements his pioneering legacy of underwater photography and adventure. For Cousteau, photography was vital to his reconnaissance. Holly can relate: ‘People used to tell me I couldn’t photo-ID porpoises – that it was impossible,’ she chuckled. ‘That’s how this project started because volunteers were up here getting photos and sending in their sightings. Like a catalogue! And we’ve now got 138 porpoises recorded – and counting,’ she grinned.
The notion of a ‘porpoise catalogue’ is one to which I wish to subscribe. Just imagine, every month, this popping through the post box? Perhaps you ferry it back to a corner, don some woollens and hunker down with a tea – ready to scoop the secret lives of the Pembrokeshire porpoises. This catalogue is the result of one of the first studies of its kind in the world. Arguably the best, it’s changing the way that porpoises are studied. Photos of random porpoise heads and fins reveal stories of their families and social structures that were previously a mystery. The ‘notches’ in dorsal fins are as distinct as a fingerprint – and a photo of this is enough for science.
According to the thousands of photos that Holly and the team have gathered so far, we’ve got around six key characters at Strumble Head: one incredibly diligent female has had four calves in four years. Same father? Doubt it. Another is a desperate housewife craving empty-nest syndrome, after both calves born between 2017–18 are still at home, in a curious demonstration of the ‘boomerang generation’ (*cough*, cannot relate). Exotic lone travellers occasionally arrive on the scene. Perhaps on a journey to find themselves? Or on a romantic mission to normalise toxic masculinity (male harbour porpoises have been known to emit aggressive click patterns on occasion). Please. It’s aching to be adapted into an ITV reality binge.
‘People just don’t tend to study harbour porpoises in this way. They’re small, shy, they don’t come out of the water and perform like dolphins, but here …’ Holly greeted the scene like a master of ceremony, her right arm sweeping the horizon, ‘… here you can see the porpoises coming in, you can see their trajectory and direction of travel, how fast they’re going and then you can take photos and see who it is.’
Wonderfully, through Sea Trust Wales, you can now ‘Adopt a Porpoise’ and be updated with news of calves and the latest gossip. Holly finds that people who approach her are more than happy to be corrected and learn. People forget. And that’s OK. Porpoises just aren’t that guy.
Near where Holly and I stood lies a body of water known as ‘The Bitches’. It describes a frenzied composition of immense tidal races, rocks and reefs, creating tides that muscle through narrow channels into Ramsay Sound at speeds of up to 18 knots – around 20 miles per hour. But here’s the thing. Whenever I am in a car, travelling at 20 miles per hour, I feel certain that my walking pace is faster. It just feels unbelievably slow. Place yourself in a body of water moving at such speed, however, and it is an entirely different story. Caught up in it at the wrong time, with the wrong equipment, and you might find yourself shouting a vocabulary far more colourful than ‘bitches’. It is something of a white-water rodeo show and thus is home to the international kayaking championships and many a shipwreck beneath the whirlpools. It’s these tidal races that are an essential agent in the harbour porpoises’ assignment. The parent current rises up from the south of the Irish Sea, with an offshoot hitting the Llŷn Peninsula off the west of Snowdonia, before ringing back south around Cardigan Bay. It’s got plenty of time to gather speed and power to govern these coasts.
Holly traced a line across the sea in front of us, running diagonally like a trouser seam. I squinted my eyes. ‘This bit collides with the eddy circling back from Cardigan Bay and acts as a trap for the fish – which is why so many animals come here to feed.’ Seals, sunfish; common, Risso’s and bottlenose dolphins; as well as minke whales, gannets, guillemots, razorbills, Manx shearwaters, even a novelty killer whale on occasion – the entire aquatic A-list has a role in this exceptional matinee.
Looking below, I willed the swell to gather and sweep a dozen porpoises in its arms. At high tide, the porpoises often leap out of the waves while feeding, and it’s possible to get a photo of their entire body. In winter, they surf the waves. Holly was scrolling through photos of such things on her phone. On flat, calm days like this, a glimmer of a fin breaking the surface is all that you are likely to see. Some more boils burped on the surface. The scene was every shade of blue. Any other day, any other endeavour, and it would have been meditative. But the itch of impatience was growing on me like a monster spot. I tried to impress Holly by confidently and – incorrectly – identifying a sunfish below. ‘Oh, yeah – we’ve had loads of compass jellyfish here this year,’ she said casually – course you have. I wanted to dissolve and return to the world as a woodlouse. (To be fair, it was pretty far away.)
It’s not just marine life that has monopolised this unique confusion of tides. The human quest for alternative energy sources has, in recent years, adopted a more fervent approach. In the UK, this is particularly urgent, given that we have legally bound ourselves to become a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. An admirable, if aspirational, idea given that our growth in low-carbon electricity production slowed sharply in 2019. Wind, wave and solar power being the key trio in our royal flush, in what sometimes feels like an infinite global poker game as we race to accomplish carbon neutrality.
Several elements do work in our favour here. More than 6,000 islands form the British Isles. The length of the collective coastline is nearly 20,000 miles (just shy of the circumference of Earth). Our northerly latitude plops us amid a major convergence of air masses – ensuring our weather is good but occasionally poor. Admiral Robert Fitzroy began issuing maritime storm warnings in the late 1860s, founding what would later become the UK Met Office. Rob must have needed another challenge after captaining HMS Beagle on Charles Darwin’s celebrated circumnavigation in the 1830s. Fitzroy’s storm warnings sparked the genesis of today’s weather forecasting and, since 1925, the iconic poetry of BBC Radio 4’s Shipping Forecast remains the longest-running continuous forecast in the world – covering 31 sea areas four times a day. Fishing rigs, cargo ships – vessels of every shape and size – someone, somewhere, relies on this airwave medley to navigate the sandbanks of Viking and Forties, the islands of Utsire and yes, even Fitzroy.
We are a wet, windy, gloriously maritime nation. Renewable energy is by no means the solution to climate change – but it sure works in our favour. And we are good at it. There’s just that small problem of space. The UK Offshore Wind Sector Deal aims to upgrade to a ‘green economy’ and power every home in the UK via offshore wind farms by 2030 – four times what it was in 2020. I applaud the ambition. But to put it mildly, the logistics surrounding the construction of renewable energy devices is a pain in the national arse. Let alone the palaver that comes with updating tired old onshore regulations to accommodate these green upgrades. The point is that the area around Strumble Head where I stood with Holly is under constant assessment for tidal and wind energy. A box on a spreadsheet somewhere is aching to be ticked.
For Holly, it’s only a matter of time before this horizon includes a series of 120-metre high turbines wielding blades of up to 80 metres long. A slight detour might be required for our gannets returning to Grassholm. ‘It’s the construction of the turbines that cause the most damage,’ Holly told me, ‘it just displaces the porpoises – shoves them aside for a bit.’ But it’s the age-old question of short-term impact versus long-term gain. Sacrifice a few species for the good of the many? The irony of a greener solution harming nature cannot be ignored.
This dilemma is the focus of leading research from Swansea University. Dr Hanna Nuuttila is a post-doctorate research fellow at the university. She’s one of these amazing women who seem to be jumping all of life’s hurdles while studying open ocean ecology, marine mammals and marine renewable energy. Famously, she was also arrested in 2019 for using her body as a blockade on Oxford Circus as part of an Extinction Rebellion protest. She was seven months pregnant at the time. ‘I did it for my children and their future,’ she told me.
Hanna is part of the team with which Holly and Sea Trust Wales liaise. Using acoustic monitoring devices, she led the first study that recorded porpoises and dolphins throughout the year in Wales – advocating for their protection. I can’t remember the last time I felt so impacted by someone’s passion for the ocean. She radiated love for her work and energised me about a subject that has a high chance of being boring.
‘Marine renewables are a tricky one because a lot of people are very against them,’ Hanna explained. ‘But I look at the bigger picture and think, “Well, what are the other options for where our energy comes from?”’
Wind energy is costly to harvest and unpredictable in supply. Ten years ago, offshore wind farms were 90 per cent more expensive than fossil fuel generators and 50 per cent more expensive than nuclear. Despite bigger, better turbines reducing the cost of wind power, a significant wad of cash is still needed to meet the government’s net-zero carbon target by 2050. Something in the region of a £50 billion investment and one turbine installed every weekday for the next 10 years are the current thoughts so far.
Hanna is one of several researchers maturing our understanding of how our adaptation to climate change affects the ability of the marine world to do the same. In high tidal zones like Strumble Head, there was little to no relevant research on how renewable devices would impact marine mammals. Species that, if threatened, have the power to initiate a cascade of trouble for the rest of the food chain. Hanna seeks to remedy this. In 2017 she wrote an academic paper entitled ‘Don’t forget the porpoise’. I knew I had come to the right woman.
Harbour porpoises are highly mobile. How far they can travel in a day is still barely known, but judging by their presence across most waters of the northern hemisphere, it seems likely they are very well travelled. Hanna explained that the trouble with animals like this is we may never be able to understand the effects of artificial structures on their lifestyle, ‘because they can just choose to bugger off!’ Quite right. The proposed turbines and development around nearby areas of the Welsh coast like Ramsey Sound suddenly make Holly’s surveys seem like the most important job in the world. Hanna led a report in 2015 that appealed the need for these ‘fixed vantage-point surveys’ to understand better what rows of steel giants will mean for this part of the British Isles. Taking photos of porpoises and engaging the public with their story has never been more crucial.
In terms of an immediate impact to the porpoises and other wildlife around Strumble Head, it’s thought to be similar to those that arise from the exploration for – and extraction of – commercial oil and gas since the 1850s: noise pollution, contamination, changes to water flow and turbidity, changes in food availability and a very real risk of cetaceans colliding with the turbines or increased boat traffic during the building phase, which can last anything between five and seven years.
A German study in 2008 observed the impacts of an offshore wind farm on harbour porpoise behaviour, right in the infant stages of the farm’s construction. Horns Rev 2 was the first offshore wind farm in the North Sea, with 91 turbines standing off the coast of Denmark. It honed the technique of ‘pile driving’ (ouch …), where enormous devices are plunged into the seabed to lay the foundations for the turbines. Pile driving has been a thing since Roman times and has been a key ally in the human pursuit of making our mark. Significant noise pollution during the pile-driving phase is somewhat guaranteed.
Remember – underwater, sound is sight. Ears are eyes. For porpoises, as with all toothed whales,3 the density and opacity of water place acoustic communication at the heart of survival. Short, intense, high-frequency ‘clicks’ govern the language of their navigation, mate-choice, mother-calf bond, feeding success. These clicks are generated by forcing air through specialised organs called the ‘phonic lips’ in the nasal passages below the blowhole – radiating through a region of fatty tissue called the ‘melon’. Really excellent.
When swimming, a porpoise clicks around 20 times per second, furiously increasing the number of clicks as it homes in on prey like a metal detector. If successful in a catch, the clicks end in a finale called the ‘terminal buzz’, at hundreds of clicks per second, that traps fish in an acoustic beam. Such feats of aural precision are observed across nature, in other toothed whales, of course – and bats. It is evolution in its element, and for the porpoise, the whole symphony sounds like the most outstanding fart. But receiving an ‘echo’ of their clicks from fish, an obstacle or another porpoise is key to making this behaviour worthwhile. My loves, there is no point in blowing clicks out your melon via your phonic lips if you cannot read the information upon return. It would be like sending a hopeful text to someone you fancy; they read it but never reply. The worst.
Anyway, the researchers in this German study wanted to measure whether the act of driving immense structures into the bed of the Danish North Sea, with pistons and hammers and such, might cause our harbour porpoises a bit of a headache. Well, shockingly, it did. But the long-term effects may not be as expected. Within an hour of pile driving, the colossal sound pressure generated underwater curtailed acoustic activity of the porpoises by 100 per cent: clicks, echoes – the lot. But I’m pretty sure humans would have had a similar response? All acoustic communication remained below typical levels, and general porpoise-related activity declined steadily during the five-month intense pile-driving phase. The researchers state that this adverse impact on porpoise communication lasted much longer than they thought. But they also reported a short-term increase in harbour porpoise chatter, at 22 kilometres away from the construction site. The impact might be far from temporary, though, as a 10-year study observing porpoises near the Nysted Offshore Wind Farm in the Baltic Sea found that acoustic activity among the porpoises here declined to a worrying level – and is still recovering.
The nature of the harbour porpoise’s high frequency ‘click’ (one of the highest across toothed whales) means that to communicate, they need to do so within a space of one kilometre so that they can hear one another. Meaning they must have room to be physically close in order to communicate. As fellow mammals, we can surely understand? As my chat with Hanna from Swansea University intimated, assessing at the population level the long-term impacts of an animal as elusive as the porpoise is very difficult.
Nifty mitigation techniques like ‘bubble curtains’ have been tested around wind farms across the North Sea to try to shield marine wildlife from the noise. Bubble curtains might sound like the magical prelude to cake at a five-year-old’s birthday party, but they are already proving relatively effective at diminishing the adverse effects of hearing loss and subsequent behavioural changes in our smallest cetacean. Immense volumes of bubbles are released via perforated hoses that encircle the foundation of a turbine. Connected to supercharges on ship decks, the bubbles serve to intercept and dissipate incoming sound waves. It’s early days, and more research is always helpful, but it’s getting more and more challenging to match science with the pace of climatic and societal change.
Hanna is an advocate of porpoise adaptability. We all should be. As I write, she referred to an 18-month study by her colleagues, published in July 2021. A complex hydrophone array measured echolocation around tidal energy generators, measuring consistent clicks close to the turbine. These promising data tell us that porpoises can evade the rotors of a turbine and minimise the risk of collision.
‘Porpoises can and will adapt, but where their threshold is for this kind of disruption and subsequent relocation, we simply don’t know. I think, quite strongly, that we must reduce our consumption drastically, so we don’t have to produce so much energy in the first place,’ Hanna implored. Kettles, lights, toilet flushes … human behaviour is hard (but not impossible) to change.
The harbour porpoise has a constant need to feed. I believe them to be my soul animal. Hanna also divulged that porpoises play. ‘They will play for hours. Because having fun is important in life. They actually enjoy themselves, and that is quite fascinating.’ Cousteau, too, marvels at the porpoises’ games in his book Silent World. Chasing each other, swimming in spirals, blowing bubbles … sound familiar?
At Strumble Head, it’s possible to set the clock to the feeding pattern of the porpoises. Put a turbine (or 50) there, and it will affect who comes to the dinner table – if any at all. ‘But ten kilometres up the coast, it could be a different story. Porpoises might feed on the ebb instead of the flood – all because the fish in that area might behave differently,’ Hanna pointed out. This is helpful to know if we are to test the compatibility of renewables with endangered cetaceans. She referred to a ‘Survey, Deploy and Monitor’ policy in Scotland, where renewable devices are installed under the proviso of a heavy amount of scientific research happening alongside. ‘We need the devices in the water to find out about potential harm to cetaceans,’ she added.
It is a curious case of fish. As the Mock Turtle jested with Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – ‘No good fish goes anywhere without a porpoise.’ Lewis Carroll, you tease. Harbour porpoises may be among the smallest mammals in the sea, but they have adapted their dense bodies to tolerate extremes of water temperature – from the eastern Mediterranean to the sea ice lapping Greenland. They are really quite legendary to have achieved such geographical spread. And how to manage a fairly constant risk of heat loss to chilly waters while on the prowl? Eat. Continuously. Day and night, they’re on the binge. Their metabolism is nearly double that of a terrestrial carnivore of equal size. And when they’re not eating, by God, they wish they were. A couple of marine biologists once perfectly described the harbour porpoise as leading a ‘life in the fast lane’ in a 1995 review of the life history of the porpoises in the Gulf of Maine. I love this. Our little harbour porpoise takes life by the horns – and sprints with it.
They have a broad taste for the pelagic and benthic (open water and seabed dwellers): herring, mackerel, sprat, cod, plaice and sand eels. Autopsies of stranded porpoises have also shown a liking for squid and, in younger ones, krill. It’s a perfect example of how, for all predators, it’s the groundwork laid by these lower members of the food chain that ensures a full, healthy stomach for the porpoise, the dolphin, the shark, the whale. There is no oak tree without acorns. No Sunday roast without pollinators. Less air for us to breathe without plankton.4 A study in 2018 suggested that both captive and wild porpoises can alter their food intake and double their blubber thickness to adjust to the cooling waters between summer and winter. Blubber is a fatty layer of tissue beneath the skin of all marine mammals, providing a layer of insulation and energy – an inbuilt down jacket-plus-Christmas-belly sort of situation. Our own body performs a similar regulatory service via homeostasis. The general rule is that it’s much better for everyone to maintain a stable body temperature than to waste time and energy flip-flopping between states – when you could be out eating, mating, fighting enemies and such. It gives porpoises innate freedom to move where they please, when they please.
Despite most of the cetaceans in the British Isles being used to fluctuating water temperatures, some scientists consider the possibility that our little harbour porpoise might one day, in a warmer world, suffer from hyperthermia – i.e. overheating. The (evil?) twin of the more well-known hypothermia. Data on the thermal tolerance of wild marine mammals is largely non-existent, mainly because they’re so bloody hard to get hold of for any length of time to do this kind of research. We know that other larger mammals in polar waters, like bowhead whales, have dense, cushioned areas of blubber. But for species like the porpoise, it’s fair to worry about how their physiology will manage these unforeseen extremes. They haven’t planned for this.
Run with me here. We know a thick layer of blubber insulates against inevitable heat loss during winter. But the trouble is, the seasons are no longer fitting into the boxes we have made for them. They are spilling over the lines. There is cheating and hypocrisy – especially between winter and spring. It would only take an unusually mild winter for this neat layer of thickened blubber to be redundant. And our porpoise suddenly goes from being hyper-mobile and agile to a rather hot, buoyant little whale. It is mid-November as I write. Unseasonably mild; 15ºC, wet and stormy. I wore shorts and flip-flops to the Londis this morning. Is winter losing its bite?
In time, heat stress may well drive harbour porpoises to up sticks and migrate north so that they can calve in cooler, more productive waters. But this gamble will only pay if that habitat is decent – i.e. plenty of food and clean waters with minimal risk of tangles with boats. In fact, it’s already happening. The changing climate is pushing species between oceanic latitudes like chess pieces. Evidence of changes in cetacean composition around the British Isles due to rising sea temperatures is growing. Some Australian research published in Nature (2020) measured something called ‘climate velocity’ – the speed at which animals would need to move to remain within their ideal temperature range in the ocean. The findings revealed an ugly truth. Overturning previous understanding, these data predict that deep oceans could warm seven times faster by 2050 – even if we wildly reduced our greenhouse gas emissions.
No longer is the deep sea the safe, stable, untouchable abyss we like to believe. As I write, a fleet of volunteer vessels: ferries, cargo ships and containers – are trawling torpedo-shaped devices called a Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR), as part of the planet’s longest-running global marine survey. Running since 1931, this is an astonishing example of citizen science. Volunteers are dispatched in the name of data and planetary health to inform research. It’s one of the only long-term datasets we have to make any kind of prediction on ocean health in the future. Focusing on plankton and its movements has decoded some of the impacts of climate change in the oceans, finding a general shift northwards of plankton in all areas. But these northerly areas are becoming a crowded waiting room of anxious ocean travellers. This is climate velocity in action. Greenhouse gases, the silent assassin rippling through all layers of the ocean at different speeds, is wreaking havoc on the precious connections and associations that exist between marine species – half of which we don’t even know. It’s a cruel cocktail. Bond would have hated it. Too much shaking and stirring. And not enough ice.
I was struck by the despair in Hanna’s voice over the phone when I asked her if we would likely see jumps in seawater temperatures within our lifetime. She said we most definitely will. ‘We’re dealing with the feedback loops of previous loops,’ she said. Greenland is key here. In many ways, the true thermometer of the planet. According to NASA and the European Space Agency, Greenland’s ice sheet – the veritable celebrity in the frozen world – has lost 3.8 trillion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2018. If, like me, you can feel your brain stumbling during your attempt to process these numbers, then picture this: 3.8 trillion tonnes of melted ice is the same as losing the water from 120 million Olympic swimming pools to the ocean – every year – for 26 years. Warmer air temperatures and fossil fuels are to blame for 50 per cent of this melting. Already, all this has raised the global bathwater by 11 millimetres (the width of my present brain) – and the rest of the ice sheet has a further 7.4 metres potentially up its sleeve. Gulp.
Aside from the fact that a further 6 million people will be at risk of flooding from around the world – the more sea surface exposed, the more carbon and other waste the ocean absorbs. This feedback loop can have cascading effects on all marine life in these waters. Weirdly, it seems the porpoise can temporarily monopolise the new feeding grounds that emerge as the ice melts. Scientists found an improvement in harbour porpoise body condition between 1995–2009, during a period of local warming in West Greenland. Less ice enlisted more cod and capelin larvae from East Greenland and Iceland – a symphony to a hungry harbour porpoise’s ears. But please note – this isn’t a reason to become complacent. We’re seeing effects now that were forecast to happen between the years 2070–2100 of Arctic melting. Who needs a Tardis when our future is playing out before our very eyes?
I asked Hanna what she feared for the porpoise specifically. ‘If you look at what they tend to die of, it’s so often food-related,’ she said. ‘They cannot go long without food before they begin to starve.’ If you’ve ever been out for a walk, run, or any type of outdoor frolic, you might be familiar with the feeling of a ‘sugar low’. Those who are serious about cycling (stay calm) call this ‘bonking’. I have had many an ill-timed bonk on my bike, and it’s the most terrible sensation. Essentially, it describes a genuine physiological state when you haven’t eaten enough carbohydrates and have depleted your body’s glycogen stores, leaving you with that fizzy, shaky, sweaty feeling of having deficient blood glucose levels. These symptoms alone should be enough of a warning that an emergency absorption of five Mars bars is your only path to survival. An extreme bonk can even induce a coma, which would be a rather sour turn to the family bike ride. The point is, this is pretty much what happens to our harbour porpoises when they don’t satisfy their incredible metabolic rate. If the areas they usually patrol are devoid of adequate fish supplies, they might very quickly descend into an irrecoverable bonk.
Let’s pop back to Strumble Head with Holly for a minute. To the right and further down the coast, Holly pointed to aptly named Mackerel Point. ‘Before any physiological impact, the biggest impact of climate change we’re likely to see here with the porpoises will be to do with fish,’ she mused. She told me how many of the locals in Fishguard and Goodwick recall when ‘hundreds of mackerel … hundreds’ were caught on a given fishing jaunt. But, as with insects on the windscreen, that was all in the past.
‘When we do see issues with fish stock,’ Hanna later explained over the phone, ‘there can be a critical vulnerability if the porpoise cannot adapt quickly.’ Some scientists dub the infamous see-saw of Greenland cod stocks through warm and cold periods as one of the most prominent examples of the climate acting on marine ecosystems. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) reported that British mackerel populations alone have been in a nosedive since 2011, dropping more than two million tonnes in weight between 2018–19 and losing their ‘sustainable’ status. The vulnerability of British fish stocks clearly must have had a serious impact on harbour porpoises – even though they are hardy little whales. Sigh. Hanna admitted the monumental task of isolating the specific threats that face the harbour porpoise. ‘They can survive a lot, but we don’t know how much all this affects their social processes, their family groups. We haven’t got a clue as to how they actually live, you know? And I’m worried we’ll leave it too late.’
By 3 p.m., my time as a porpoise spotter was rapidly waning. And then Holly said something which I have found impossible to forget. She said that we tend to only care about what we can physically see. I’ve heard this before – but it was the way she said it, in this extraordinary setting, that made me think. I thought of my family. My friends. The way a good red wine lingers on the glass. I thought of the blackbird that hops along our neighbour’s roof every morning. My iPhone glinted in the sun. These things are all tangible, physical, within reach. So, what sickens me is that we are more likely to see a harbour porpoise emaciated in a fishing net than we are to see its dance with the waves. We know we have been keen on fish and fishing for nearly 200,000 years, but the very act of fishing, and the unregulated rate at which it’s happening, is the immediate threat to porpoises in the British Isles – before the temperature change, before the fish depletion.
‘Harbour porpoises get caught and die in nets,’ said Hanna plainly, ‘this is absolutely the top cause of mortality – from the Baltic, across the Channel – everywhere.’ The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Sky Ocean Rescue found that an average of three harbour porpoises is killed every day in the UK as ‘bycatch’. Bycatch describes the event of unwanted fish and marine animals caught accidentally during commercial fishing activity. Gillnets, in particular (nets that trap fish through their gills), tangle porpoises and suffocate them. As I write, ‘sustainable fishing’ seems no longer worthy of policy. Key ‘sustainability’ language has been written out of the latest Fisheries Bill (2020) by the Government. European waters are also coming under fire for failing to regularly monitor dolphins and porpoises, especially in bycatch. We’re in danger of ring-fencing the most kinetic of environments with more red tape, around a sea that can barely continue to absorb our mistakes.
‘My worst fear is that we don’t have a government that wakes up to the ecological crisis,’ she said. ‘We’re allowing mass industrial fishing to continue – and this will significantly disrupt the delicate biodiversity upon which porpoises depend.’ Maybe it might be better to worry about something that hasn’t happened rather than not worry and then receive an almighty surprise. Instead, she said, we should always expect to be harming something. That’s how conservation works and has done so for years – abiding by a ‘precautionary principle’ – surmising consequence to every action.
One other thing that seems key is that overfishing and bycatch incidences release carbon into the atmosphere. A fascinating study in late 2020 revealed the enormous (and largely secret) carbon sink that we’re losing – by not letting whales and fish sink to the ocean floor after death – preventing what’s known as ‘carcass deadfall’. Presumably, a natural process? Their data estimates that ocean fisheries have released nearly 1 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide since 1950 – preventing about 95 per cent of natural carbon in fish and whales from being buried. A large whale, like a humpback, can sequester around 33 tonnes of carbon once it dies naturally. Surely a no-brainer then for fisheries and governments to prioritise the avoidance of larger species? To prevent further temperature rises, we must save the whales.
Again, it’s the issue of how we use this space. Because the trouble is, much of the area offered to UK offshore wind farms and renewables also clashes spectacularly with Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) for the harbour porpoise. Some research even goes so far as to propose that offshore wind farms could one day co-locate with Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), rendering the initial disturbance to wildlife negligible.
Plymouth University reviewed evidence in 2013 that explored the potential for the structure of a turbine to accommodate wildlife – whether the imposition of an offshore wind farm could exclude fishing activity, thus encouraging fish to school the area. Perhaps the footprint of a turbine could provide valuable refuge areas, allowing the accumulation of bivalves, crustaceans and other food web instigators?
But maybe we’re trying too hard here. Certainly, Hanna had a word of caution: ‘There simply aren’t any easy solutions left – but we must consume less – less of everything.’ Good point. For all its brilliance, technology is just part of the solution. Sure, a big, well-connected, jazzy piece of the puzzle – but just one piece. There is little point in dreaming up fanciful pictures of wildlife dancing happily about a turbine if consumption continues to rise. If we support fast fashion, tumble-dry laundry on a sunny day, leave the lights on and the engine running. Try as we might, we cannot just install some renewables and carry on as per. Not any more. Hanna insisted on the need for urgency. Urgency to reduce fossil fuels. Urgency to recognise nature as something with rights. ‘The sea does not belong to us – we need to share it with many species – porpoise included. Some people use the term “other-than-human-beings”, which kind of resonates with me.’ And with me.
But not everything human-related spells natural disaster. On World Oceans Day 2021, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) announced the designation of Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs) across the UK in each regional sea, following relentless campaigning by organisations such as The Wildlife Trusts. HPMAs hope to act as top-tier buffers against the gaps in legislation around exploitation – by enforcing a total ban of all harmful activities. Such protection presents a fascinating experiment to see how nature recovers when stressors are reduced. And, we have officially entered the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. Put simply, the G7 nations are clubbing together to drive positive change for oceans during the ‘Ocean Decade’ (2021–2030). We’re making some good moves, but are we acting fast enough?
Back in my hostel room in Goodwick, I pondered my next move and fingered a shortbread from the tea tray. I figured I had two choices at this time of day: engage in a session of light, thoughtful drinking on the harbour wall, or hire a paddleboard and try and find these porpoises in one final attempt before I left the following morning. The latter, I felt, was more sensible given the waning daylight and, anyhow, Tesco Express and its beverages were conveniently on the way back to the hostel.
I cycled through Goodwick, up over the hill and down a steep one into Fishguard Harbour. I overheard a man on the phone describe Fishguard as the ‘undiscovered Padstow, mate’, which I thought very apt. The harbour was picture-perfect, the tide high and smooth as sea glass. I had booked on to the last place of an evening stand-up paddleboarding tour around the coast and was soon tagging awkwardly along with a family of four from Kent who definitely wished I wasn’t there.
Our energetic instructor, Libby, was blonde, nose-ringed, steaming with coastal knowledge. She was everything I wished I could be in that moment. Fortunately, standing on a paddleboard is something I’ve become quite good at – it being my preferred mode of transport on the rivers at home to sneak in among reed beds to spy on coots and call to the beavers.
Compass jellies lit the water below our boards, dazzling like chandeliers in their turquoise ballroom. Pigeons stirred into flight as we meandered sea caves. The harbour porpoise had no doubt eluded me, and I felt a sting of disappointment at not seeing it that afternoon, but I decided I was idiotic for thinking that. It was nice to know they were there somewhere, and they would show themselves if they wanted to. They just have better things to do than to oblige me. I enjoyed myself immensely as the sun dipped below eye level, and we wobbled on our boards back towards the harbour, marinating in that rare preserve of a balmy July evening in Britain.
Thinking back to that moment, I recall what Hanna had said towards the end of our call. I had asked her what had drawn her to the sea and the porpoise. Referring to her time as a diving instructor and wildlife guide, she told me, ‘Fish don’t really care if you’re there, but porpoises will look at you. You know that they know you’re there. They give you the look.’
I had a greasy round of chips and rode back to the B&B as the sun set. It all felt very ideal. At breakfast the following morning, a chalkboard next to the doorway displayed a lesson from Proverbs 3:23 – a vague attempt to empower travellers up the steep staircase after a bellyful of beans on toast?
Then you will go on your way in safety, and your foot will not stumble.
I crammed a third piece of toast into my mouth and fell up the first step on my way to get my things – time to leave. Snowdonia beckoned.
Notes
1 Sometimes called Britain’s ‘national flower’, this invasive plant was introduced in the late nineteenth century from China and Japan and has a knack for growing in the most awkward places, spreading rife across railways and buildings.
2 Members of the crow family, including crows, jackdaws, rooks, ravens, jays, magpies, Asian treepies, choughs and nutcrackers.
3 Dolphins, killer whales, sperm whales, narwhals, etc.
4 Plankton (tiny creatures drifting in the ocean) generate 50 per cent of the oxygen we breathe. They also provide a huge carbon sink. Pretty fundamental.