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