Saturday 26th April

We left the harbour on this mornings Discovery Voyage in the ‘mizzle’ but this defiantly did not hamper today’s sightings.

We stumbled across a large amount of seabirds fairly quickly. They mainly consisted of razorbills, guillemots and Manx shearwaters, many of them returning with sandeels in their beaks. Pulling into the island we counted 5 seals on the rocks, this all went towards Cornwall Seal Group Research Trust’s spring seal census which was happening today. Josh had to mention the mauve-stinger jellyfish that were drifting past as we headed offshore.

A large group of gannets and shearwaters were spotted feeding and soon enough common dolphins were also spotted working hard underneath. Duncan saw signs of two lunge feeding whales but they gave us the slip for sometime. We patiently waited on the outskirts of the feeding watching some of the dolphins bow ride whilst the rest of the pod kept herding the thick bait ball together, you could see the dark mass from the boat. Our patience paid off as a ( very sneaky) minke whale came edging towards the bait ball. We were rewarded with great views as it surface around the boat before disappearing underwater to continue feeding. After the feeding dwindled away a whale was seen multiple times resting on the surface. The first great skua and puffins of the year also made an appearance as we left the whale heading towards the Runnelstone as well as a small group of porpoises.

April is always inconsistent for cetacean sightings but  today proved when food is around the rest always follows.