Sunday 24th May

We had some amazing sightings today. On the morning trip we started off with a male seal hauled out on the rocks, followed a short while later by a young female who had caught a massive conger eel! The poor eel was skinned and eaten alive, and it shows that even small, cute looking seals can be voracious predators. We then spotted two species of dolphin – firstly a good number of Risso’s, followed by a small group of commons who were heading southwards at speed. At the very end of the trip our first sunfish of the year was seen, though we were running too late to stop.

However on the afternoon Bay Discovery, not one more but FOUR more sunfish were spotted. The first two were medium sized and one in particular gave us great views as it basked at the surface. The third one, in by the coast, was the most enormous sunfish we have ever seen in 22 years of running trips. It was absolutely colossal, and when I first saw the fin, I thought “basking shark”. There was no tail fin though and on closer inspection the fin was too narrow to be a basking shark. It did purposely approach the boat in a very shark like manner though! To finish the trip there was a little tiddler of a sunfish.

We always used to say the sunfish appeared for half term, and so they have.