Thursday 11th April

It was a grey murky day today as expected, however the sea has mostly calmed down after the extraordinarily strong wind and huge tides of the last week or so. This morning was admittedly very misty, though as often happens when the vis is poor, the seabird sightings were great. There were very large numbers of Manx shearwaters soaring past, as well as kittiwakes and surprising numbers of storm petrels. We have not seen this many so early in the season before. On the surface we also saw lots of Velella velella or “by the wind sailors”, harmless relatives of the Portuguese men of war. There were also a couple of seals round the island. With the increasing wind this afternoon the mist cleared and we had similar sightings of lots of seabirds and a few more seals, including our old favourite Kelp! She doesn’t normally rock up until May.