Sightings Blog

Another beautiful day, with sunshine and light easterly wind. A small group of common dolphins approached us as we headed offshore, and there were two very small calves with them. The little ones jumped excitedly  but unpredictably so very hard to capture on camera! It was described by one of the ladies on board as”Magical”!…

A quieter trip today with no marine mammals spotted – at least no alive ones. We did find another dead seal and also what we figured used to be a bottlenose dolphin which had been dead a long time and been pushed down the Channel by the easterlies. The teeth looked massive. We saw a…

It was a wet windy start to the day so re arranged our morning Discovery Voyage trip and went ahead with the afternoon Ocean Discovery trip once it had stopped raining and calmed down. We had two different encounters with harbour porpoises, as well as a grey seal including plenty of  birds. These included great…

More puffins today on our Discovery Voyage trip! (Josh always gets the puffins ☹️ ).  We also had lovely views of a load of other seabirds including Manx shearwaters, guillemots, razorbills, and kittiwakes, and the seals were very curious today. A small pod of harbour porpoises in the late afternoon light were a lovely  end…

It was another day of two halves, with a wildlife filled morning and a pretty quiet afternoon. This morning we found two large groups of common dolphins which stayed with us for ages, bowriding the boat and giving everyone some lovely views. We also saw a couple of seals and lots of seabirds. There was…

We can hardly believe it but in May, Marine Discovery will have completed 20 successful years in operation! Here is the first instalment of how we began… When Duncan and I were fresh faced things in our late 20s, we were primary school teachers in Indian Queens and St Austell respectively. While we enjoyed teaching…

What a gorgeous Discovery Voyage trip we had this morning. This is the four hour trip and when conditions are right, it allows us to get down into the Land’s End area. Not only does this give us spectacular views, but it also lets us explore areas which are beyond the shorter trips. There were…

It seems to be absolutely standard on May bank holiday to have a sunshine, blue skies….and a freezing northeasterly wind! Great for sailing though – it meant we could head westwards into the Land’s End area and have a bit of shelter down there as opposed to the more usual big swell. There were lots…

We had a lovely sail today and the light was amazing. It was quiet for marine mammals though there were loads of Manx shearwaters pouring past. The sailing regatta at Marazion continued! We have always said that we report on the quiet days as well as the days when there is loads going on –…

  It was a day of two halves today. This morning’s four hour trip started off calm with light winds – we had a lovely encounter with some sleepy common dolphins and puffins, and there were hundreds of Manx shearwaters rafted on the water further west. We had great views of Land’s End and the…

Happy May Day! Spring has most certainly sprung, though it was a lot cooler and greyer here than in other areas. We had a lovely trip this afternoon with a great variety of seabirds spotted, including kittiwakes, shearwaters and more puffins! At one site we spotted a group of several male and female Eider ducks…

It was a great trip this afternoon in the warm spring sunshine. There was still a choppy sea running after the strong wind of yesterday, but it wasn’t too bad. Quite often with easterly wind you can see very little, but today we very quickly found a pair of Risso’s dolphins who cruised past the…