shearwaters

Today was living proof that you don’t need sunshine and calm blue seas to have an amazing trip. We took some students from Cornwall College Newquay out this afternoon, and there were grey skies, a bit of mizzle and some rolling southwesterly swell. However the sightings were fantastic. After watching a couple of seals bobbing…

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…

Today the conditions were trickier than they had been, with a brisk southwesterly wind whipping the sea up into a choppy state. That meant the afternoon trip was shortened to two hours, but this morning we got the full three hours in. At this time of year, we start seeing more of the exciting offshore…

There was a really thick mist first thing morning which thankfully lifted enough for us to start trips at 9am as planned. There was no wind but a long rolling swell which, with the lingering mist, made things feel like Monterey Bay! This impression was made even stronger by the large pod of common dolphins…

Once again we saw hundreds of common dolphins throughout the day. We found harbour porpoises on both the morning and afternoon tours and saw sleepy grey seals in the morning. The bird life was once again spectacular as well as the usual suspects we also saw Cory’s, great and sooty shearwaters on both the morning…

We had a typical August day today with a brisk northerly wind , good sailing conditions and plentiful wildlife. The local haul out site suddenly has a lot more seals there than there have been so far this summer, with adult males and females, and little juveniles too. All the seabird chicks which hatched on…

We had a four hour trip this afternoon in light winds and good visibility. For the first time this summer there were lots of jellyfish to be seen – compasses, blues and combs. We found good numbers of harbour porpoises near Land’s End, along with lots of seabirds – gannets, shearwaters and guillemots. At the…

Yet more strong easterly breeze today which made spotting conditions challenging. We stuck to more sheltered waters and had two great Ocean Discovery trips in the strong June sunshine. This morning we went eastwards past the Mount to Cudden point and then went sailing across the bay. We found grey seals in three locations, though…

We had to cancel yesterday unfortunately because of the strong easterly wind. Today it had dropped a lot though and we had two trips. This morning we saw several grey seals, lots of feeding seabirds and to finish the trip we had good views of some more Risso’s dolphins! These made us pretty late back…