ecotourism

On our Ocean Discovery sea safari today we stopped at the island to observe the seals as the tide rose. There were several of them still hauled out – it’s always entertaining watching them try and retreat from the rising water before bowing to the inevitable and getting back in. Seals like to do this…

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…

We had to cancel yesterday because of the strong northerly wind, and it was still pretty breezy today. This is an offshore wind though, so close to the coast at least, it doesn’t make for rough conditions. On the morning Ocean Discovery we found some more Risso’s dolphins – a pair this time. They were…

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…

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…

We had two great trips today, a Bay Discovery in the morning and a last minute Ocean Discovery in the afternoon. During the morning the inner part of the bay was alive with hunting porpoises and gannets tracking them, firing into the water like arrows. There were also bluefin tuna down there in the action,…

We were back on the water today after a very windy and wet few days. There was still a big chunky swell running, but conditions were ok to do two Ocean Discovery trips. The windy interlude did not affect wildlife sightings – there were plenty of common dolphins to be found, and we had great…