Monday 23rd September

We had a great day today with some of the Master’s students from Exeter University, who came out on the boat to try to spot some marine vertebrates. They certainly did that. We started off with some amazing views of bluefin tuna – real whoppers were breaching close inshore near some fishing boats. We also spotted harbour porpoises and had a few encounters with some Risso’s dolphins. These were spotted further away and later in the trip we encountered them again, this time closer to the boat. We also saw some grey seals. This afternoon the second lot of students were treated to several different encounters with harbour porpoises. We watched them hunting under gannets, moving around very quickly. We had a really lovely encounter with a very inquisitive pair who buzzed us repeatedly – we could see their fast little bodies wriggling around the boat checking us out. There’s something very special about a porpoise encounter like that. I intelligently left the camera back in the office so the photos were taken on the video camera. We also had a brief encounter with a small group of common dolphins and some grey seals.

It was great to see Tom again who used to work with us at Marine Discovery and is now a post doc at the university.