Penzance

On today’s boat tour, we had a surprise on leaving the harbour this afternoon when a very small minke whale popped up just in front of us, then behind us then was gone! People are often concerned when they see little whales on their own, but minkes wean and are independent when they are quite…

Finally we had a good weather day (apart from a bit of fog this morning). This half term has left a lot to be desired unfortunately with several days of cancelled trips. And in more good news, as suspected the westerly winds have brought the seals back into the bay. We have really missed them…

It was a quieter day today with no fins seen, however we had a really lovely afternoon with a great bunch of people. We headed westwards along the coast first , as far as Porthcurno before sailing right out offshore. The endless easterly winds are over for the moment and we had a very sailable…

We had a four hour trip in the sunshine today on a beautiful calm blue sea. Heading south we picked up a small pod of common dolphins who were just chilling after feeding near some shearwaters and guillemots. They checked us out for a little while before peeling away so we left them alone. We…

Passengers had a fabulous experience on this afternoon’s Ocean Discovery trip, when we found large numbers of common dolphins feeding with countless shearwaters and lots of gannets and guillemots. All had seemed quiet for a while, though it was a beautiful sunny afternoon, with light winds. Distant views of gannets dropping down into the water…

A quieter trip today with no marine mammals spotted – at least no alive ones. We did find another dead seal and also what we figured used to be a bottlenose dolphin which had been dead a long time and been pushed down the Channel by the easterlies. The teeth looked massive. We saw a…

We can hardly believe it but in May, Marine Discovery will have completed 20 successful years in operation! Here is the first instalment of how we began… When Duncan and I were fresh faced things in our late 20s, we were primary school teachers in Indian Queens and St Austell respectively. While we enjoyed teaching…

Happy May Day! Spring has most certainly sprung, though it was a lot cooler and greyer here than in other areas. We had a lovely trip this afternoon with a great variety of seabirds spotted, including kittiwakes, shearwaters and more puffins! At one site we spotted a group of several male and female Eider ducks…

It was a great trip this afternoon in the warm spring sunshine. There was still a choppy sea running after the strong wind of yesterday, but it wasn’t too bad. Quite often with easterly wind you can see very little, but today we very quickly found a pair of Risso’s dolphins who cruised past the…

We left the harbour on this mornings Discovery Voyage in the ‘mizzle’ but this defiantly did not hamper today’s sightings. We stumbled across a large amount of seabirds fairly quickly. They mainly consisted of razorbills, guillemots and Manx shearwaters, many of them returning with sandeels in their beaks. Pulling into the island we counted 5…