Monday 2nd November

It was great today to take some of the next generation of marine scientists from Newquay’s Applied Marine Zoology course. The weather was as much as you can hope for in November with sunny skies, blue seas and a good breeze for sailing. Sailing south out of the bay we were surprised by three big breaches from a couple of bluefin tuna – one side of the boat were lucky and the other were not! After that everything seemed quiet for a while apart from some kittiwakes and a few guillemots and razorbills, until a couple of sharp eyed students spotted a fin. It was a pair of common dolphins who swam under the boat then completely disappeared. We stayed in the area hoping to pick them up again in the increasing northeasterly breeze, and we were tantalised by a few glimpsed of a bigger pod surfing through the waves in the distance. Patience eventually paid off when the maternal pod of mothers and calves swam over and rode along with us for a short while before heading off south.

We then motored back east along the coast and into the wind, stopping at the island the check on the seals, where we also found lots of roosting gulls and some curlews.

We’ll be doing a follow up lecture next week with the students about using data for habitat modelling.