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Sightings Blog

boat trips penzance

Friday 21st August

What a long day! Definitely a case of make hay while the sun shines, as conditions next week are currently looking dire! This morning we had a three hour trip and headed down west to find the tuna. Sure enough they were there leaping away, though hard to get photos of. There were some seals…

It was a squally August day today with everything the weather could throw at us. This morning on the Discovery Voyage we had great sightings of several Risso’s dolphins, including mums with calves and also some males who were more boisterous. There were also lots of common dolphins, some grey seals and some tuna spotted….

Sunday 16th August

Back out on the water after a day off yesterday when it was very windy. Conditions had not changed much, with loads of dolphin and tuna feeding inshore on this morning’s Discovery Voyage trip, and hundreds of gannets and gulls hunting with them. We also spotted several sunfish including one breacher. There were a few…

Tuesday 11th August

We had three fantastic trips today. The first one was a private charter organised by Dr Tom Horton of Exeter University, who used to be a Marine Discovery guide in another life! His recent research has investigated the stomach contents of landed tuna to see what they are eating – really important stuff if we…

Saturday 8th August

This morning was one of our 5 hour Discovery Adventure trips and it certainly was a bit of an adventure. We ended up going about 14 miles south of Penzance in a choppy south easterly sea and building wind which created some exciting sailing conditions. On the way we picked up pod after small pod…

Wednesday 5th August

It was a full on day today with a morning Ocean Discovery followed by two Bay Discovery trips. All three of them had great sightings. This morning there were plunging gannets as far as you could see, and masses of common dolphins with them. These stretched from right in the inner part of the bay…

Monday 27th July

Back out on the water today after a day off in yesterday’s strong wind. We started early with a five hour Discovery Adventure, in more westerly wind than we have been used to, with greyer skies. A far more typical Cornish summer’s day in fact! However as predicted, this brought the seabirds back in, and…

Thursday 23rd July

We had spectacular cetacean sightings today with Risso’s dolphins on all three trips, and lots of porpoises on the first and the second. This morning’s Ocean Discovery saw the porpoises first and as has become customary in the last week or so, numbers were very high and they gave us some really close swim bys….

Saturday 18th July

There were some very small dolphin calves spotted this morning, some with their foetal folds clearly visible. We also saw some harbour porpoises on this four hour trip, lots of diving gannets and a few seals hauled out on the island. It was a little cooler today with a decent northerly breeze blowing which made…

Friday 17th July

It was great to welcome back crew member Georgi today, who returned to Marine Discovery after having her baby boy in March. It was a fabulous – and very hot 🥵 – day with more fins than you could shake a stick at. On this morning’s Ocean Discovery we saw common dolphins from the start…