03.08.2024 – 50/50

Don’t get me wrong I love Cetaceans but for me the perfect tour is 50/50. 50 percent Cetaceans 50 percent other life (Sea Turtles (Carreta carreta), sea birds and sharks). This is no doubt a product of my education. As an undergraduate student I was always drawn to ecology the concept of how natural beings are never singular but part of a convoluted, messy, beautiful yet sometimes twisted web.  Cetaceans do not exist without seas to swim in, without fish to hunt,  without others of the species to breed and feed with. Cetaceans depend upon good sunlight to drive photosynthesis, to feed algae, to feed the fish they eat. In return so many depend on them. They drive the ecosystem by fertilising phytoplankton with.. well you can probably guess, they create homes for barnacles and lice, allow birds to co-feed when they hunt and even in death there are orca (Orcinus orca), large sharks and deep sea oddities waiting to be fed from their bodies. Perfect Tours happen rarely but today we got one at 14:00 with a rare sighting of a white faced storm petrel (Pelagodrama marina) and a Artic Skua (Stercorarius parasiticus).

By Peter Worth

Sightings of the Day

Stenella 

09:30 Atlantic Spotted Dolphin, Bottlenose Dolphins

14:00 Striped Dolphins, Atlantic Spotted Dolphins, White Faced Storm Petrel, Artic Skua

17:00 Striped Dolphins

09:30 Atlantic spotted dolphins

13:30 Striped Dolphins