Tuesday 1st October

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 on the island and we recorded them for the Autumn Seal Census we’re taking part in. Lots of feeding gannets showed us where the first group of porpoises were, and a couple gave us some good views.  A little further on we were teased by a small group of furtive common dolphins who swam a big lap of the boat and briefly swam alongside before heading away again – we saw them a bit later too. A group of feeding seabirds including Cory’s shearwaters, kittiwakes and gannets showed where a shoal of tuna was feeding then another big group of gannets showed us some speedy hunting porpoises. Earlier in the trip we saw an Arctic skua harassing a kittiwake for its catch.