ecotourism

Despite the dreary windy conditions we had a fabulous trip today. It’s always worth heading out at this time of year even on an unpromising looking day. After hoisting the sails on leaving the harbour we sailed south and spied a bit of bird activity, including some of the familiar looking pecking by great black…

Back out on the water today after and extremely windy week. We couldn’t do the first five hour of the season as planned, but we were able to get out for a 3 hour Ocean Discovery, and we’re very glad we did. As often happens after strong westerly wind, there was lots of life about,…

We had a final Ocean Discovery trip to finish the half term this morning. After a quiet start to the season, this week has seen beautiful weather and a lot of very welcome visitors – both humans and animals! We watched some seals at the island at the start of the trip, including our favourite…

We saw four species of cetacean today! On the morning Discovery Voyage a harbour porpoise was spotted very quickly, which was great because we haven’t been seeing too many of these lately. Numbers will build as we head through the summer. In the far distance we spotted some common dolphins but then much closer we…

We had an Ocean Discovery trip followed by a Discovery Voyage trip today. Despite being at low tide when the seals should have been hauled out on the rocks, it was pretty quiet this morning. There are a staggering number of pot buoys round the island at the moment, so a lot of fishing effort….

It was another mirror calm day and we had common dolphins on all three trips. The first of these was a three hour Ocean Discovery, when we saw multiple pods including mums with some very small calves. We were extra careful around them for this reason, stopping still and allowing them to come to us….

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…

It was all about the sailing and the shearwaters today. The sun broke through the persistent cloud we have had for the last few days, and just the right amount of northeasterly breeze gave us unexpectedly perfect sailing conditions. Today had been going to be a day off before the busy half term starts, but…

It was a bit of a misty one this morning though the swell had dropped (slightly!). There were still so many seabirds out there – it’s an amazing sight watched them gliding and dipping over swells and into troughs with scarcely a flap. They were searching for food along big streams of foamy plankton which…

We had an Ocean Discovery trip this afternoon in improving conditions! It started off misty and murky and the swell and chop was coming from at least three different directions after the strong wind of the last couple of days. It didn’t stop the wildlife though. The seabirds were amazing with hundreds of shearwaters spotted,…