Monday 12th August

We had two Ocean Discovery trips today. The morning was still rather murky but it brightened through the day and we had blue skies and sunshine by mid afternoon. On the morning trip we were treated to an amazing porpoise display. As we head into the autumn, we see more mating behaviour and this involves the male porpoises sneaking up from the left and ambushing the females, quite often completely breaching as they do so. However the female in question this morning wasn’t having any of it, and she gave him a massive whack with her tail. We saw both of them doing a bottlenose dolphin like leap and vertical dive. In fact there were breaching porpoises this afternoon as well, so much so that I initially mistook one group for common dolphins. We did see some dolphins on the afternoon tour, just a small group who gave us some beautiful views as they swam alongside as we sailed. The sun was coming out at that point. We also found another inquisitive group of porpoises who had been feeding under gannets, and some grey seals.