Watch: Unbelievably rare Sei Whale spotted splashing around in the Firth of Forth

An incredibly rare type of whale, which has only been sighted a handful of times in Scotland in the last 50-years, has been spotted in the Firth of Forth.
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This superb video of a Sei Whale was captured by Sidonie and Agathe Mather on Sunday, April 12, between 5pm and 6pm at Whitehouse Bay, South Queensferry.

Their dad, Andy Mather, posted images of the whale on a local Facebook page, the Forth Mammals Marine group and within an hour, almost 300 people had engaged with it, sharing their amazement.

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One of the founding members of the group, a local marine mammal enthusiast, Ronnie Mackie, saw the Sei Whale himself on Saturday night from his house in Kinghorn and knew straight away that it wasn’t a regular visitor to the Firth of Forth.

He said: “The thing that is quite noticeable about the Sei Whale is that it has got a very upright dorsal fin in comparison to most of the whales we see, and that’s what I spotted first and I knew it was rare.

"I was looking and there was an article I saw from a few years back which said that there had only been nine previous sightings of this type of whale in Scotland in the last 50-years, so it’s quite a rare one.”

Mr Mackie was delighted to see the images Mr Mather shared in the Facebook group, he had spent two hours on Wednesday morning trying to track the whale down again, unfortunately with no luck.

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Mr Mackie continued: “We’ve already had a lot of excitement this year in the group because we had the Humpback Whale here for a few weeks and now we’ve got this Sei Whale, it's incredible.

An incredibly rare Sei Whale has been spotted in the Firth of Forth.An incredibly rare Sei Whale has been spotted in the Firth of Forth.
An incredibly rare Sei Whale has been spotted in the Firth of Forth.

"I just find it so interesting.

“The thing about the Sei Whale is that it shouldn’t really be here. It’s more a deeper water whale, it normally stays out to the west of Ireland in the Outer Hebrides, it migrates north to feed in the summertime, so it’s very unusual for it to be here.”

Mr Mackie isn’t worried about the presence of the whale as although it isn’t the mammals normal habitat as they are known to turn up in unusual places now and again.

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