Dolphins

A lovely sunny bank holiday and an enthusiastic friendly bunch of people for our Ocean Discovery tour. They were rewarded near the end with a great encounter with some common dolphins, who swam around the boat and bowrode, given everyone some good views. Prior to that it had been rather quiet, though with some nice…

The wind switched to a northerly direction today so it was flatter (though chilly!) In the sunshine we found a small feeding frenzy of common dolphins, with lots of seabirds dipping in from above. We could even clearly the baitfish (sprats? photos weren’t clear enough to tell) jumping to try and escape the carnage. It’s…

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…

We had two Ocean Discovery trips today in a lively south westerly sea, but it was so good to see the sun again! This morning we again saw lots and lots of the little by-the-wind-sailors – with their little sails up, perhaps they were enjoying the sailing as much as we were. There were plenty…

I have been looking back over 2023 and made some images to represent our sightings of different species. We recorded cetaceans on 81% of our trips last year, which is an amazing sightings rate. 10252 dolphins, porpoises and whales! We also saw grey seals on most trips, bluefin tuna and ocean sunfish. Each image has…

It was very choppy today after the windy weather yesterday and overnight, so trips were just two hours long. This morning spotting conditions were very tricky – we saw bluefin tuna, seals in the water and some brief porpoises. We also had great views of a Portuguese Man of War. Seabird sightings included razorbills, guillemots,…

There was a lull in the weather today and we headed out for a three hour trip with ten passengers on board. When advertising places I said species we’d be looking for included common dolphins, porpoises, bluefin tuna and grey seals – glad to say we saw all of the above! In fact the common…

We had two Ocean Discovery trips today in gloomy choppy conditions. The wildlife was great though, with the amazing seabird sightings continuing. There are so many great and Cory’s shearwaters out there, with even a few Manxies remaining. This afternoon we saw two Cory’s squabbling over a fish in a very gull like fashion. There…

Instead of fog today we had wind – lots of wind! However in the bright blustery conditions, conditions were ok to run a two hour trip and we had an exciting sail (and rather a lot of splash). It was worth it though, because a long way out we spotted some feeding gannets which showed…

Today wasn’t very successful. Murk and low cloud gave way to rain and much thicker fog than was forecast, which was a pity because for the first time in ages the sea was calm. Before we aborted our four hour trip was were visited by a couple of common dolphins who swam past us repeatedly…