Saturday 26th September

We weren’t supposed to head out today, but the forecast for tomorrow looks so ropey we swapped as many people from Sunday to Saturday as possible, and ended up with two full Ocean Discovery trips. It was mirror calm to start and a short distance out of the harbour we had beautiful views of the juvenile red necked grebe, still in its summer plumage. In the distance there were the clouds of feeding gulls and big splashes we have become accustomed to in the last couple of weeks so we motored south to watch the spectacle. It’s particularly impressive watching feeding tuna when there’s no wind because the sound of the heavy splashes is so loud! There were also a few dolphins darting among them picking off the scraps. Further west we saw masses of tuna feeding , though as we arrived it all died down and there didn’t appear to be anything else…until a furtive maternal pod of common dolphins was spotted. They were very quiet and restful and uninterested in us so we left them and came back to the island where we found eight seals hauled out.

The afternoon was quieter generally but there was still wildlife to be found. We had the briefest encounter with common dolphins and some great views of juvenile kittiwakes. However it seems the porpoises have returned – in true porpoise style with no fuss or spectacle. They are just quietly here as though they have never been away. We also saw some big old seals on the island who were very battle scarred!