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Sightings Blog

Penzance boat trips

Saturday 12th October

It was a dark, dingy morning but the rain held off for our Bay Discovery trip. There was a small juvenile seal tucked away on a rock on the island, and some big bluefin tuna jumping near Lamorna. Autumn is really the time to be seeing their antics from the shore – all along the…

Tuesday 17th September

It was warm and sunny today for this afternoon’s Discovery Voyage, though there was a brisk easterly breeze making it rather choppy in places! There was a lot of wildlife out there to see, with two groups of common dolphins (one of them joined us as we sailed for a bit of bowriding), and some…

Friday 6th September

We had two Ocean Discovery trips today and the weather was an enormous improvement on yesterday’s wind and rain. This morning we had an extraordinary porpoise encounter. There were lots of gannets further east in an area where we have been seeing lots of porpoises so we headed over for a look. Sure enough we…

Wednesday 14th August

Today was one of those days when the harbour porpoises completely outshone the dolphins. They were feeding energetically in large pods, and because at this time of year they are eating shoaling fish like the dolphins, this appears to give them more free time. And what do they do with this free time….they become much…

Monday 29th July

What a day we had on the water today. It started so calm that the sea’s surface was like a mirror. This gave us awesome through-the-water views of not only the hundreds of common dolphins, but also harbour porpoises. It seems that by this stage of the summer, the porpoises are feeding more efficiently which…

Thursday 25th August

It was a miserable mizzly morning today so we cancelled the four hour trip and went out for the Bay Discovery trip at 2pm when it cleared up a bit. There were more seals hauled out than we have seen for ages – a mixture of adult males, females and juveniles numbering 15 in total….

Monday 15th July

This morning’s trip was cancelled because of the bad weather but we set off on the Ocean Discovery this afternoon wearing lots of waterproof layers in case of more rain. What a good thing we did, as we had a fairly Biblical downpour. However rain does not affect wildlife sightings, and there were small groups…

Tuesday 25th June

It was a quiet sleepy sort of day today for our two Ocean Discovery trips. This morning we covered a lot of miles offshore and some shearwaters, guillemots, gannets and fulmars, all searching just like we were. A seal popped up in front of the boat who had been hunting several miles offshore. We then…

Monday 10th June

It was a cool and breezy day today, but there was sunshine and a flat sea, so perfect for our Bay Discovery and Ocean Discovery trips. We could see the white waves and the swell further offshore so kept close to the coast. On this morning’s Bay Discovery we sailed past St Michael’s Mount before…

Tuesday 23rd April

This morning there was hardly  a breath of wind and we had to get out of the harbour because of the dropping tide, so we went out into the bay and bobbed around for a few hours. Under a gannet in the distance we saw a tall curved dorsal fin surface once – a Risso’s…