Friday 4th July

We had two Ocean Discovery trips today and both were great fun with some really friendly guests. This morning we had some lovely encounters with common dolphins – we watched them feeding with Manx shearwaters in the morning calm. We also saw a grey seal hauled out. This morning almost on leaving the harbour we saw a lot of gulls scavenging and then sure enough, a large pod of Risso’s dolphins who were actively hunting inshore on the high tide. They were spending a lot of time below the water and surfacing singly and in pairs, and seemed to be tracking the cuttlefish out of the inshore bay area southwards. We then saw quite a disturbing incident when one of the great black backed gull appeared to catch another one unawares, and proceed to try and drown it. The poor thing grew too weak to take off. They are utterly pitiless predators, but that’s how they survive. Sailing southwards after that we saw a few harbour porpoises, one group of four and the  a single animal, though they were ever so hard to track in the building westerly wind. At the end of the trip we saw several hauled out seals on the island, including a really massive bull seal.