Monday 25th May

It was another spectacular day with masses of wildlife, and the added bonus of the paddle steamer “Waverley” visiting Penzance for the second time in three years. Always such a wonderful thing to see especially on a beautiful day like this. This morning it was quite a quiet start until we had a great encounter with some Risso’s dolphins a little way down the coast. Josh got some lovely clear photos which will be added to his massive image bank for his Master’s project. There were plenty of seabirds around too, including gannets, razorbills and kittiwakes.

On the afternoon Ocean Discovery we went along the coast hoping to catch up with the Risso’s again. We had great views of the Waverley off Gwennap Head in the haze and then one of our regular passengers, John, called “Fin!” Not a dolphin but a mother porpoise accompanied by her absolutely tiny calf. It was so small and unco-ordinated it must have been very new indeed. Shortly after that we had a brief look at some very shy common dolphins in the tidal race, where the waves were really standing up. On the way back in, we had two more encounters with sunfish, in almost the same place and the same state of tide as yesterday. We then saw something we had never seen before – often they will approach gulls, who will peck the parasites off them. This time it was fulmars they approached, clearly very itchy and longing for a nice scratch. The fulmars seemed completely nonplussed! They watched it approach, looked at each other as though to say “What on earth is this” and then all started shouting at each other 😁.