porpoises

Today we had our first Discover Marine Science day. After the sunshine of last week, in the strong westerly wind it felt freezing! We initially had some introductions to species ID, photo ID and the marine geography of Mount’s Bay in the office, before heading out. There were plenty of grey seals around the island…

We had a three hour Ocean Discovery trip this morning in sunny breezy conditions, with ten keen interested passengers on board. It was a little choppy, but we had a great trip. There are still Cory’s shearwaters around, along with lots of feeding gannets and kittiwakes. There were several seals hauled out on the island,…

There was a bit of a northerly breeze for this afternoon’s trip, but the swell height has dropped astonishingly given that 48 hours ago Mount’s Bay was getting absolutely battered from Storm No Name. We headed out with 12 well wrapped up passengers but it wasn’t actually that cold. We found five seals hauled out…

We had what might be our last long day of the season today with a four hour followed by a three hour trip. There was some rolling swell, but wind conditions were nice and calm which meant we could easily see the wildlife around. There were astonishing numbers of porpoises around all day, in large…

What a four hour trip we had this morning. Spotting conditions were more or less perfect and we saw more or less everything. There were three groups of common dolphins in all, who gave us some great views as they swam beside the boat. There were very large numbers of harbour porpoises seen, hunting quickly,…

We had a great day today with some of the Master’s students from Exeter University, who came out on the boat to try to spot some marine vertebrates. They certainly did that. We started off with some amazing views of bluefin tuna – real whoppers were breaching close inshore near some fishing boats. We also…

It was really gloomy today for our Ocean Discovery and Bay Discovery trips, but all things considered we were really lucky not to get wet, especially after yesterday’s thunderstorms. We had a couple of excellent trips with some really good wildlife sightings. This morning we very quickly spotted something round jumping repeatedly out of the…

We had two Ocean Discovery trips today and they were both crackers. It was still a little choppy and splashy but the easterly wind dropped down through the day and there was some warm hazy sunshine. We found some big groups of common dolphins this morning, some of whom were eager to bowride with us….

Another warm sunny day with an easterly breeze. We had one Ocean Discovery trip, which was fully booked. There were a few seals bobbing around in the water near the island as the tide rose, and we had some great close views of harbour porpoises who swam really close to the boat. There were some…

After a murky start this morning it turned into a beautiful atmospheric day. There was no wind at all, and banks of mist hanging around which slowly cleared. This morning we were really pleased to find large numbers of common dolphins around again, after a quiet few days. There was a large group of about…