Catching up...

Been extremely busy with an event run by Planed that we fronted as well as launching our skin boats, (cwrwgs) at the weekend. Iolo Williams came along to suppport us and several Sea Trust supporters lent a hand. Gaynor McMorrin (Fishguard Arts Society) filmed us!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhYwtg-KIgU will update asap with stuff I have recieved but not managed to post yet, allthingsgood, cliff

Porpoise Rescue

Hi Guys....have just got back from a rewarding night on the Lifeboat...

I had a telephone call from Phil Lewis of British Divers Marine Life Rescue regarding a stranding that had been reported....A (pod of) dolphin(s) caught in a net near Aberporth.

"Razorbill" was not equipped /lit sufficiently to make a launch safe, but the MCA had been alerted to the report and had agreed with the Lifeboat station that we could launch both boats as a training exercise.....Phil kept in contact with me as we got to the scene....clifftop searches had been undertaken by Dolphin Watch volunteers, but had been unsuccessful.

Our Senior Helm used his local knowledge to find the net which was close in under the cliff. We followed the net along it's length with the engines off and raised (due to the proximity of the rocks and came to a an exhausted Porpoise (not a Dolphin). Its tail had become entangled in the net which had cut into her. She allowed me to support her whilst we removed the line. She initially swam back into the net, but then sat and drew some breaths before seeming to gain strength and then porpoised off to sea....It's my first physical contact with a Porp (difficult to tell sex in the dark, but think it was a female adult....she had a long straight 1ft scar on her back if that helps with ID?) and was amazed at just how heavy she was!

Because we normally sight porps in pairs (at least) both boats did a sweep of the shoreline to check for others, but gladly none were found. An excellent result all round! Upshot is that lots of the crew are going to join us for a Marine Mammal Medic course which Phil will help us to arrange. Daniel

EDIT: A quick update...the holiday makers who spotted the problem have today been speaking with BDMLR....they initially said there were 4 animals (Dolphins incorrectly)....Unless the other three had managed to escape (I would have thought this unlikely seeing how tangled the animal we found was) they must have stayed with the distressed /trapped animal.....perhaps this goes to illustrate how complex their relationships are? The press have got hold of the story and I did a Radio Wales interview earlier (in my RNLI capacity) and there is some local /national press coverage expected.

Wooltack Point, 23 March

An hour or so on Wooltack this morning found up to 5 Porpoises in the North-flowing tidal race. Clearly identifiable were one calf and one large adult, with 2-3 medium-sized adults. They were in 2 groups up to a quarter of a mile apart, and while the Gannets circled overhead, there appeared little for them to dive for.
We have seen relatively few porps here this winter: its lovely to have them back

Cetacean Monitoring / Wildlife Boat Trips aboard "Razorbill"

Dear WinW Bloggers, the moderators have kindly suggested that we post up a brief blog to let you know that as part of our Conservation / Green Tourism strategy, Razorbill RIB Charter will be reporting all cetacean sightings to Sea Trust this year, as part of their local cetacean monitoring programme.

As such, all our passengers will not only be seeing some of the most incredible marine wildlife Wales has to offer but there will also be a direct conservation payoff!

We are offering 2 hour Rigid Hulled Inflatable Boat trips launching out of Cardigan / Gwbert. We will then have the option of heading up or down the coast, hopefully encountering Bottlenose Dolphins and Porpoises (although obviously this cannot be guaranteed). We will also take in Cardigan Island and bird /seal colonies etc en-route. Please see our website galleries for a taste of what we encounter on charter www.razorbillribs.co.uk

“Razorbill” will be available to charter for the reduced rate of £150 for 2 hours and can take 5 or, weather permitting, a maximum of 6 passengers (5 seated on jockey pods, one on tubes with our crew). Good wet weather /warm gear is essential as there is a likelihood that passengers will get splashed due to the nature of the RIB (It’s also worth noting that there are no toilet facilities available).

For information / availability please contact Dan at: info@razorbillribs.co.uk or 07702887363

Due to other charter commitments and planning trips around tidal windows, we would appreciate advanced booking wherever possible.....if you don’t have enough people to make a full trip, let us know and we can look at pulling together parties.....

Bottlenose dolphins, Ynyslas

First sighting this year for me of bottlenose dolphins off Ynyslas. Two adults were travelling just offshore heading for Borth early this morning.

Not good news from Steve...

I set out below an extract from the sightings page of Glamorgan Bird Club (not my sighting I hasten to add) . The location was south of Lougher Bridge. Its not all good news on the cetacean scene. Been a long while since I had look here so was pleased to see a Spotted Redshank. Also 36 Brent but most unusual of all, a freshly dead Harbour Porpoise on the sand. Probably by-catch!
Steve Rosser

Thanks for this Steve, and in I am setting this in the colours of the Dragon in the hope we redeem ourselves tommorow on the rugby field ...
Hmmm... yes anyhow its a sad thing and there is little real protection for our marine evironment or its biodiversity. In the past couple of weeks since the scallop fishing season has been reopened, sightings of Porpoises in Pembrokeshire have plummeted in places where they were consistently high. Thanks to several dedicated watchers we have evidence to prove this and will carry on the surveillence .
allthingsgood, cliff.

Bardsey Bottlenoses

From Andrew Clarke - Just a quick message to let you know that I encountered a pod of at least nine Bottlenose Dolphins moving rapidly south through the Bardsey Sound (SH 144 234) on Saturday 13th March, between 1323-1333 hrs while out walking the coastal path. Weather conditions were good; dry with broken stratus and little glare, a northerly wind force 4 and excellent visibility. Surprisingly no other cetaceans were seen - there's usually a few porpoise in the tide race. (Apologies to Andrew for not getting this on Whales in Wales sooner)

Porpoise at New Quay

Bob Relph on the 'Ceredigion Bird Blog' reports seeing two porpoise offshore at New Quay yesterday afternoon (16th March) whilst walking on the coastal path. I had a good scan for cetaceans off Borth and Ynyslas yesterday but nothing to report. Send us up a few from Pembs; boys and girls!

Mad March Risso's

Dear Cliff,
Still low porpoise numbers in the Ramsey Sound area. Malcolm was lucky enough to spot two induviduals. Compared to numbers observed of a mont ago, these are tough times. We got luckily surprized by a pair of risso's dolphins though. After spotting them about 50 metres off the headland, the animals moved into Whitesands bay. After a quick visit, they swam out again towards the lighthouse.
Cheers,
Ernst & Aniek

I am not sure but our dynamic Dutch duo may have posted our first ever March Risso's here, although it has to be said that \\march is probably one of the months with least effort. Wow! well done again guys!!!

Slim pickings but "Splitfin" puts in a fourth apperance...

Dear Cliff,
Little porp activity at St. David's Head and Pennlechwen today. We did observe splitfin again. (She) was accompanied by a juvenile porpoise that we have seen in Split's close company twice before. Despite of her injury, it looks like she is still able to contribute to porpoise continuity.
Cheers, A&E

Hi Cliff,
Spent about 5 hours at Strumble today, saw 1 porpoise in tidal race just before full tide,
only saw 1 in 5 hours.
quite a few gannets around in late afternoon.
Cheers
Dave and Sharon B

Difficult to apportion the blame for poor showings of Porpoises in the calm conditions we have been experiencing.

It could be the big tides, it could be the disturbance caused by the recommencement of scalloping.

I saw lights close in to Fishguard on Saturday night, was it an innocent vessel going about its legal way or a scalloper coming into the 1 mile exclusion one for some easy pickings? I am told "Crynogwen" the fisheries protection vessel is laid up due to a shunt which is something the scallopers will be well aware of.... We really need to keep an eye on this.

The fourth sighting of "Splitfin" since early February by our keen young Dutch crew! the observant will see this is two pic's of the same animal joined rather than two seperate animals. side by side.

It seems sad that such a horrific injury should have been inflicted on this animal but it is working to our advantage in terms of monitoring site fidelity. All the St Davids observers have really done sterling work, and I bet Alison is out there as I write this, well done all!

If its not one thing, its the otter

Cliff,
A very unproductive day at Strumble yesterday. Only two porpoise for a brief moment in a two hour observation. Possibly a reaction to the neap tide and the tidal phase (end of flood tide). We tend to have the most positive scans at the end of the ebb tide. We did get a nice present in the form of a foraging otter right in front of us near the cliffs. This brightened up an already sunny Strumble day.
Cheers,
Ernst & Aniek

The Scallop fishing has started again with hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of scallops being landed already. This is obviously going to impact on the local marine environment and so any cetacean sightings will be particularly useful in trying to monitor the health and wellbieng of our marine wildlife.

Bottlenose Dolphins and plenty of Porps from 'Razorbill'

What an exceptional day we had today! ’Razorbill’ is off on charter to North Wales again next week, but in advance, the crew and I hatched a plan to take a trip out today with a view to familiarising ourselves with some of the new nav equipment we have recently installed….we were also joined by Mark, skipper of the EA research vessel 'Vigilance'...

We snuck out of Gwbert at just gone 9 am this (Sunday) morning (still 0 degrees when we left) and headed out beyond Cardigan island toward the wreck of the SS Sutton….on our way out, at around 2 miles offshore, we were met by a pod of 6 Bottlenose Dolphins…any sighting is great, but on a Sunny March morning it was a great welcome to Spring….Surprisingly, another half a mile or so on we happened across a pair of Porpoise as we stopped to watch a group of Gannets circle and dive….rather than give descriptions, we have footage of both sightings, but we are struggling to upload to our YouTube channel at the moment....will post the link here as soon as we get it sorted!

Due to the racing Spring Tides we decided that a dive on the SS Sutton would have to wait, so having loaded our marks we started across to Cardigan Island where we would drop in on the SS Herefordshire….As we neared the island we picked up yet more Porpoise, but 5 animals this time! We cut the engines (sea state allowed) and watched them for a while, but didn't get any useable footage due to the distance.

We then headed across to Cemaes head where we took in a few of our regular sea caves to see ‘who’ was about, and then round to Seal Bay, where we sat with the inquisitive seals alongside the boat….around 10 basking and at least 40 or so in the water around us….

One of those fantastic days when we all felt very privileged to live where we do! We will be editing together a full video for the day with sightings / dives etc during the week, and will upload this on our website also http://www.razorbillribs.co.uk/

Dan

EDIT: Unfortunately, technology has defeated us! It appears that the footage has corrupted..upshot being we have lost it! Really dissapointing...we do have some film from a digi camera which was also with us on the day, the odd dorsal can just be made out as a black spec, but really isn't worth posting i'm afraid! Dan

Things are moving in Ramsay sound!

Hi Cliff. Hope you're ok. Had such a rewarding afternoon Sun.7th.Mar. up at Ramsey Sound. Watched porpoise moving down the Sound at the end of the flood tide, probably 15-20, maybe more. They just kept on coming! This included 2 calves & an adult with a very damaged dorsal fin, in my humble opinion, identical to the one spotted by Aniek & Ernst at Penllechwen & off St.Davids Head in February. A lot of porpoise activity in the ebb tide where I had a sighting of both mothers & calves together on the edge of the tidal race. All the best.....Alison.
From Colin Butters;Cliff
Spent some time at Strumble Head on Friday the 5th March.
There appeared to be Porpoises everywhere including under a Gannet feeding flock. I made a sweep with the scope from inside the observatory and had a count of 19 individual animals. Before I did this sweep, I noted one Porpoise with a 'notch' in the dorsal fin. This notch was about one quarter of the way down from the tip of the fin and the notch was about half of this length towards the leading edge if you follow me. It was not unlike a couple of pictures that I have seen either on the Whales in Wales or Seatrust Blog. Weather was sunny, cold, wind in the north and sea state estimated to be between 2 and 3.

Perhaps the most interesting thing here and also in our ferry survey is that again we are seeing winter calves despite the lowest sea temperatures... I think A&E also had another view of "Chopfin" last week , we will have to speak to Colin and see if he can give more info on notched Porp, but as digital Photography etc improves I hope everyone will be able to afford the equipment that will really help to solve these enigmatic queries.

Commons not common but they are still there!

A Stena Europe Ferry Survey was completed with Aniek van den Berg and Ernst Schrijver, two young Dutch students who have been braving the cold and surveying our porpoises in recent weeks. Our outward leg on Friday proved the most profitable and was completed in sea state one and in daylight for the first time this year. Our porpoises failed to show at Strumble although they had beed seen in numbers the day before by A&E .soon after the gang of Herring Gulls that had been hitching a lift with us flew off to our starboard side drawing our attention to a pair of Common dolphins which were beating a hasty and pretty discrete retreat from us. Had it not been for the nosy gulls we might easily have missed them! Porpoises were seen on the Irish side as we approached the Tusker Light Rock including two mothers with small calves.

The return Journey was in a choppy sea and though we searched hard, nothing was seen until just off Strumble when a shaft of sunlight revealed two porpoises subsurface surfing, close to the ship. Ermst spotted them and it was a just reward for our efforts. Sea Temperatureof 6 degrees Celsius was recorded off Tusker with 7 degrees given for the Turbot Bank, as against 8 degrees on our last Fishguard Rosslare trip in February!

Berry Nice Porp's

A text from Steve Berry yesterday and it seems he had two porpoise of Cwm Yr Eglws beach (N side of Dinas Island on Tuesday morning. Sadly I am hopeless with text and can't work out how to reply thanking him for the message , so if you read this Steve, thanks! )
A watch from the outer breakwater, Fishguard Harbour last evening produced nothing, but 3 scallop dredgers returning to port.....arghhh!

New Quay Harbour

1st March

Bright, blue skies and a flat, calm sea combined to produce a productive afternoon's porpoise spotting. I had sightings as soon as I arrived at the harbour, but I couldn't really tell if I was seeing one animal or several. Then, as the tide began to flow I saw three distinct animals in line astern. As the afternoon wore on, the sea became even more calm and I began to see more porpoises. The most that I saw on the surface at any one time was four - they were quite spread out, about 30 - 40 metres apart. One distinctive thing that I noticed was that occasionally, animals were stationary on the surface for up to 20 - 30 seconds at a time and there was associated gull activity, so although I couldn't actually see it, I assume that they were eating.