Sunday 6 June 2010

More Pembrokeshire Dolphins!


The Pembrokeshire small boat dolphin monitoring season started with a bang when a Sea Trust small boat survey connected with over two hundred Common Dolphins just west of the Smalls Lighthouse yesterday afternoon. Just within a year of connecting with a superpod of 1,500 common dolphins, it seems that Pembrokeshire’s waters are again hosting internationally important numbers of these acrobatic cetaceans.

We just managed to catch a brief weather window which allowed us to take our survey vessel The “Cartlett Lady” offshore to search for the dolphins . It was a bit dull and lumpy to begin with but as we passed Grassholm Island about 10 miles out, conditions improved.
Just the other side of The Smalls Light, we detected dolphins approaching us and for about an hour we were surrounded by dolphins coming in for a look at us and then moving off North. We counted a couple of hundred but we could see others in the distance. If there had been a large bait-ball of fish to bring them all together it would probably have formed another superpod. West Wales is obviously one of the last remaining strongholds for this declining species.
Image: Rich Crossen

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