A ‘dolphin’ was spotted gliding through the Thames this bank holiday

Fancy swimming with dolphins in the bottle-green waters of the Thames? Well, you can’t, but if this video captured by sports commentator and ex-olympic swimmer Andy Jameson is anything you go by, you might just spot a porpoise in Richmond. 

Jameson, who won bronze in the 100m butterfly at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, saw what turned out to be a porpoise swimming slowly upriver from Twickenham railway bridge at 7.30am on Monday. He tweeted, ‘you may all think I’m mad, but I just saw a dolphin in the River Thames at Richmond’. Sightings of these mammals in the Thames are rare; a dolphin was photographed in the Thames back in February in what was thought to be the third sighting in nine years. 

Many will remember the northern bottle-nosed ‘Thames Whale’, which found itself stranded near Battersea Park in 2006, and passed away before it could reach the mouth of the Thames. Jameson stated that the porpoise appeared to be startled by noise from a gaggle of geese, but otherwise seemed to be doing just fine.