A history of Marine Discovery part 1- 20 years old this year!

We can hardly believe it but in May, Marine Discovery will have completed 20 successful years in operation! Here is the first instalment of how we began…

When Duncan and I were fresh faced things in our late 20s, we were primary school teachers in Indian Queens and St Austell respectively. While we enjoyed teaching and were both pretty good at it, we always knew it would not be a long term career for either of us (hats off to the teachers who do it for decades!). We both knew that ultimately we wanted our careers to be marine based, but it was a question of deciding what, and taking the plunge.

A visit to St David’s in Pembrokeshire in 2002 gave us an idea, when we went on a trip in a RIB round Ramsay Island and saw porpoises feeding in the tidal race know as “the Bitches”. Could we run a similar operation in Cornwall? At the time there was no other company offering similar in Cornwall – there were plenty of dive companies and fishing boats and coastal cruises, but no one specifically focused on the wildlife. With the blithe confidence of youth, we sold up, bought a second hand Humber RIB whose former life was the postal delivery boat on the Isles of Scilly, and decided Penzance was the perfect spot.

We were fortunate in many ways. Those first two summers, the weather was amazing, the economy was in great shape, we were young and energetic and it was before the internet really took off as a marketing tool, though we were canny and got a website established right from the start (looking back at it now, it was hilariously awful). Our marketing was basically getting thousands of leaflets printed, and trudging round West Cornwall introducing ourselves to hotel owners, restaurant owners, campsite owners, pub landlords…everyone we could! It seems like another world now, but we really did put the hard graft in. Our office was a 1984 Landrover – we parked on the pier, and kept everything we needed in there. People paid cash and I gave them change out of a metal tin. We had no staff so we were frequently working 12-14 hour days, and throughout this, we were still supply teaching! Hard days but happy ones.

During the long hot summer of 2006, huge numbers of basking sharks arrived, and then every summer until 2010. What an amazing sight they were – gigantic fish swimming past and under the little RIB. We would frequently count even 30 during the space of two hours. Recording what we saw, while not as important or as well developed as our methods now, was from the start an important part of what we did. While we have become better at finding and spotting dolphins, certainly the first two years we saw very few compared to the basking sharks. Sunfish were also a frequent sight which people were always intrigued by.

By the end of the 2006 season we realised we had outgrown the RIB “Spearfish”. This could take nine passengers, and to make a proper living we needed to be able to take more than that. So we waved goodbye to “Spearfish” who went off to start a new life as a dive boat in Kilkee, County Clare, and bought a new RIB “Shearwater”. This had been used by the river police on the Thames and was made by Halmatic, who have a reputation for heavy-duty, seaworthy RIBs which are used by the Royal Navy amongst others. She had a diesel engine and a jet drive – we figured the water propelled jet was less of a risk to wildlife than spinning propellers. Now, I’m not saying that Shearwater brought us bad luck because I’m not superstitious, but those were a tough few years. The jet drive and the diesel engine were fine when they were working properly, but they were unreliable and extremely expensive to run. The weather turned against us and there was an awful run of summers – who remembers the Met Office “barbecue summer”? The poor Met Office – it wasn’t their fault that they were completely misrepresented and misquoted by journalists and then subsequently crucified when 2009 turned into the wettest summer anyone could remember! Strong winds also plagued us and some months we were cancelling more trips than we were running – in July! However we did have our first staff member Kimara McCrindle who approached us for work experience and who ended up staying for four seasons. We will always remember her with gratitude and love for helping us so much during that time. We also started seeing more dolphins – in fact there were some trips during summer 2007 when we would come in from a 2 hour trip having seen common dolphins, porpoises, grey seals, sunfish, basking sharks, perhaps a minke whale and maybe even bottlenose or Risso’s dolphins too. These were a rarity though!

But by the end of 2009 it became clear that Shearwater I wasn’t working for us, we were accumulating debt, diesel costs were increasing as were repair costs, the engine would need replacing which we couldn’t afford, and moreover, how could we call ourselves wildlife friendly if were driving around in a fast boat which drank diesel and oil? What next?

This is when the idea of the sailing catamaran was born….

(next blog entry soon!)