Wednesday 28th August

What a day we had for seabirds today. As so often happens when there’s been a bit of a southerly blow, it brought all manner of exciting pelagic species within reach on our four hour and three hour trips – no chumming necessary! It started off so murky and wet that we kept close to the coast, but by the time we were at the Runnelstone it was clearing nicely. We counted Balearic, Cory’s, Great and Manx shearwaters, along with storm petrels, gannets, a great skua and even a grey phalarope! The Manxies were being curiously vocal for daylight hours. Among the seabirds there were bluefine tuna leaping. We did see a porpoise out there but it was quiet for cetaceans until we were well back in the bay and found a pod of common dolphins in the last ten minutes of the trip. During the afternoon, we headed south on the wind until we found the seabirds feeding again – as well as the shearwaters listed earlier, we also had great views of some sooty shearwaters. We bagged them all! Common dolphins were feeding with the birds, and we had lovely views of them bowriding as we sailed.