Saturday 17th August

It was supposed to be a day off today but we put on a couple of late notice trips because of the windy days we have lost this week. It started off beautifully calm with some sunshine and we found some  grey seals initially. Heading further south we spotted a group of common dolphins who gave us a really lovely encounter in the calm conditions. Further on things got a even more special with some harbour porpoises spotted under feeding gannets (which as usual with porpoises were very stop-start instead of prolonged and sustained). Such numbers of porpoises though! It’s really hard to tell from photos because they all surface at different times (plus no long lens at the moment), but it was as big a group as we have ever seen, and there was more than one group as well – in total probably over a hundred. The wind then got up and we had a chilly sail back in. On the afternoon Bay Discovery we saw a big group of diving gannets from a distance, and heading out found a proper feeding frenzy of birds and dolphins, and there were bluefin tuna in there too. One of the dolphins was very dark and plain in colour – another melanistic individual. We then headed over to the island where we found a few seals bobbing around.