dolphin spotting

It was warm and sunny today for this afternoon’s Discovery Voyage, though there was a brisk easterly breeze making it rather choppy in places! There was a lot of wildlife out there to see, with two groups of common dolphins (one of them joined us as we sailed for a bit of bowriding), and some…

We had a Discovery Voyage followed  by a Bay Discovery trip today. This morning started off really mizzly with poor vis, but it was due to lift so we set off optimistically! Sure enough, the sun didn’t exactly come out but it brightened and cleared enough to have a great trip. There were lots of…

Conditions were excellent today which was handy, as we had a very busy day. On the morning Ocean Discovery we had great encounters with common dolphins, grey seals, harbour porpoises and seabirds. This afternoon there was much excitement in Penzance Harbour when the paddlesteamer “Waverley” arrived as part of its summer tour of the country….

What a day we had for seabirds today. As so often happens when there’s been a bit of a southerly blow, it brought all manner of exciting pelagic species within reach on our four hour and three hour trips – no chumming necessary! It started off so murky and wet that we kept close to…

It was miserable weather this morning so we just had an afternoon trip today, and it cleared up nicely. We had a full boat with cracking sightings. Suddenly we are seeing porpoises again, which after a very quiet early part of the year for them, is very welcome. Shy, undemonstrative and small, they’re not one…

It was a long day today with a four hour trip followed by a three hour. This morning it was quiet for over two hours, with a few rafts of shearwaters and some gannets spotted, before we found a large pod of common dolphins a long way offshore. We also saw an ocean sunfish and…

We had a Bay Discovery followed by a Discovery Voyage trip today. This morning we found four seals hauled out on the island, including “Kelp”. Two of them were getting extremely irritated by one another – it sounded like cats fighting. It was pretty windy, so while we had a good sail, everything else seemed…

The wind was blowing quite strongly from the west today so our four hour trip became a three hour. This didn’t affect wildlife sightings though. Firstly we found a couple of gulls feasting on the biggest cuttlefish we have ever seen – this was still in possession of its tentacles which indicates it wasn’t killed…

Everything was very quiet and sleepy this afternoon, including the weather! Firstly we watched a quiet sleepy seal on the island as the tide rose, before he reluctantly slid back into the water. Further south at one of our very reliable cetacean spots we found a small group of common dolphins, which again were resting…

We saw our first fins in a while today and excitingly one of them was an adult minke whale. We see most of these from July onwards but sometimes do see them in the early spring too. This was spotted by Josh just after we had been watching some resting common dolphins, which were quite…