New year Porpoises kick off "Year of the Porpoise" in style!

 

 

Thursday afternoon saw me on the outer breakwater at Fishguard Harbour watching several distant Porpoises just off Pen Anglas. This morning I went to Strumble with Charis Russell-Smith who was visiting us as a preliminary to spending her third year at John Moor University, (Liverpool) working with us.

The sea state was calm with a lee wind SS2 and (amaizingly) neither fog or rain, in fact really nice conditions! 

We did a click count survey sequence and recorded an average that gave 49.1 sightings for the hour. I am not sure how many porpoise that actually equates to but at least half that figure would seem reasonable.

 

Certainly at the start of the count porpoises were seen spread out near and far within the survey area . We recorded at least one bit of leapfrogging where one porpoise leaps over another and associated partial breaching and interactions. Best of all these were Charis's first British cetaceans! We went on to try the outer breakwater but sadly nothing there, none the less a very pleasant morning and I think Charis is happy with us and we look forwards to her return in September!