Attempts to herd a pod of whales that visited Millport’s Kames Bay and Skelmorlie into open water have failed ahead of a large-scale military exercise.

Boats from a number of organisations, including the British Divers Marine Life Rescue charity, spent a fruitless day yesterday trying to push the northern bottlenose whales out of Gare Loch towards the Firth of Clyde.

Concerns have been raised about the presence of the creatures near Faslane Naval Base, which will feature heavily in Exercise Joint Warrior, with a number of ships docked at the site.

The exercise will involve vessels from the UK and other NATO members training and carry out drills in the waters around Scotland.

Crews attempting to herd the whales out into the Clyde decided against returning to the water today, and will instead monitor the animals over the next few days.

Rescuers attempted to use a flotilla of vessels to encourage the pod out of the loch and into the Firth towards the open sea, with the RNLI and medics on standby watching from the shore.

The teams on the water used tactics including engine noise, blocking side channels and using banging poles to drive the whales, however the animals continued to evade capture.

A BDMLR statement said: “During debrief, a decision was made not to return for a second day due to uncertainty whether we could bring the same number of boats and crews back to the scene; concern over stress levels in the animal and that simply repeating the same manoeuvres would not be any more likely to succeed given the geography and behaviour of the whales.

“Given there are no previous international records of northern bottlenose whales being herded and the overall gaps in knowledge about the species, combined with the geography of Gareloch this was always going to be a difficult attempt with success not guaranteed.

“We have however leant a great deal about the behaviour of these whales for any future relocation of the species and given the short window for organising and conducting the relocation attempt, we are hugely proud of the efforts of the BDMLR team and likewise grateful to the many organisations who assisted this endeavour.