Friday 17th July

It was great to welcome back crew member Georgi today, who returned to Marine Discovery after having her baby boy in March. It was a fabulous – and very hot 🥵 – day with more fins than you could shake a stick at. On this morning’s Ocean Discovery we saw common dolphins from the start and then continued to see groups of them throughout the trip. They were hunting, socialising and there was an awful lot of sleeping and resting going on. This is when the dolphins are lying at the surface, blowholes out and moving very slowly along. We also saw scores of porpoises – it’s wonderful to see so many again after the slow start to the season for porpoise sightings. We briefly saw a couple of sunfish too, including one which breached. At the end of the trip we saw some seals hauled out – two males and two females

The sightings continued this afternoon, with more seals appearing over lunch. They sometimes abandon this site during calm hot weather, so it was nice to see them there. Plenty more dolphins and porpoises were recorded along with some great gannet work ups, when we watched them firing into the water as they hunted. Looking forward to seeing the tuna appear! The sea breeze got up this afternoon which was very welcome and meant we could have a bit of a sail.