sealife

July already! It was suitably summery in terms of the wildlife found today, if not the weather. This morning we saw more harbour porpoises than we have seen since last autumn. We start seeing much larger groups from July onwards as they come in to the bay to feed on the fattening fish, but I…

I was unsure all week about whether Friday trips would be possible based on the wind forecast. We were able to head out on an early Ocean Discovery this morning in the end and we’re glad we did, because there was an amazing feeding frenzy going on in the bay. Hungry  dolphins raced around herding…

Lots of dolphins on this morning’s trip, almost as soon as we left the harbour in fact. There was a group close inshore and then another group further out in the middle of the bay. We also saw grey seals hauled out on the island. We had a belter of a sail heading back to…

We saw several grey seals hauled out on the rocks during the morning Ocean Discovery trip, including males, females and juveniles. Sailing westwards, we picked up a few shearwaters, gannets and guillemots but on the whole it was quieter offshore so we decided to go a different direction on the afternoon tour. The brisk north…

Happy  solstice. It started off murky and damp with a few rolls of thunder first thing so it was a good thing we had a later start than normal for this morning’s trip. The sun broke through and we started the trip by finding come common dolphins in the morning calm. We also saw a…

We had two Ocean Discovery trips today and had great sightings on both. This morning we found a small group of common dolphins who stayed with us a while, lots of feeding seabirds and an ocean sunfish. We also saw a herring gull divebombing a heron, which we haven’t witnessed before. This afternoon we watched…

We had a lovely look at several harbour porpoises on this morning’s Ocean Discovery trip. While we see them very frequently later in the summer, views at this time of year are often more difficult and fleeting, but not today! We also saw some common dolphins, lots of seabirds and some grey seals hauled out….

This morning’s trip was originally supposed to be a four hour tour, but as forecast, there was a lot of south west wind overnight, which created some big chunky swell. So we kept it to three hours and didn’t go too far west, but even so, the surf was an impressive sight. We found some…

After the utterly miserable conditions yesterday, we were back  out on the water in sunshine and a great sailing breeze today. This morning’s passengers were treated to some curious seals who popped up for a gawp at us, as well as only our second sunfish of the year. It’s usually May half term when they…

We had some wonderful encounters with Risso’s dolphins on this morning’s four hour trip. We saw them a few times over the course of the morning, firstly a group of seven or so and later on a pod of four. It can be difficult to tell how many there are with Risso’s because they can…