Dolphins

It was extremely breezy today, so while sailing conditions were exciting, spotting conditions were difficult. It was all there though. This morning as we sailed out of the bay in the distance we saw masses of whirling diving seabirds and found a massive feeding frenzy. On the way we had a brief encounter with a…

We had a lovely three hour trip this afternoon in really calm conditions. Despite the gloom on land, offshore the sun was out. We found three seals hauled out on the island, including our favourites Kelp and Seaweed. This is the 17th year in a row we have seen Kelp in this location – truly…

We had a super long day today, with a three hour followed by a four hour trip, and the four hour was more like five hours! The reason for this is the amount of wildlife out there at the moment – it’s more on July levels than May. This morning was the quieter half  of…

We had a lovely couple of trips in today’s sunshine. Both morning and afternoon Ocean Discovery passengers had great encounters with common dolphins while under sail, and they loved being close to the animals on the net of the catamaran – something you can’t get on other wildlife watching tours! We also saw grey seals,…

We had two Ocean Discovery boat trips today. On the morning tour we found two pods of common dolphins. The first juvenile pod came racing in to bow ride giving a fantastic encounter. We watched the second group, which was made up of mother’s and calves from a distance initially before they also came over…

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…