Saturday 7th September

We had two Ocean Discovery boat trips today. The morning started under a dramatic sky. We headed to the south and found multiple groups of harbour porpoises by following the seabird activity. The porpoises proved tricky to watch although one large group finally gave us some better views. There were random blue fin tuna breaches in the area but no sustained feeding. we travelled further south west and found large groups of shearwaters including Manx, Cory’s, great and sooty shearwaters. We also watched some brief blue fin tuna feeding. On the way in we found grey seals around the island both in the water and on the rocks.

In the afternoon we first headed to the island and watch the grey seals. There were more on the rocks and quite a bit of activity. Once large male scared two juveniles in to the water in order to steal their haul out spot. From the island we traveled south and were rewarded with fantastic views of a very large pod of harbour porpoises. The surfaced many times all around us as well as rushing around and displaying a variety of social behaviours including full breaches. We continued to find porpoise pods as we travelled south and spent much of our offshore leg surrounded by seharwaters. We also saw to arctic skuas in different colour morphs.