Since Sarah Earl began looking at the porp's at Strumble back in the early nineteen nineties, it has become an accepted fact that in general the porpoises at Strumble move up and down with the tides. My own observations over a couple of decades have confirmed the accuracy of Sarah's observations.
In general porpoises will be seen moving east (Strumble is north facing) with the rising tide from west of the lighthouse, past the lookout and beyond towards Fishguard. As the tide changes to ebb, the porps return so basically the best time to see the porp's is more or less a couple of hours or so before and after the tide changes, possibly three on spring tides. The tidal currents are complex and these predictions are rule of thumb as sometimes the tide moves slower or quicker past the lookout. The period between the tides seems to be a time of inactivity. The tides were not with me yesterday but the fair weather and flat sea tempted me. Despite the fact that in the morning, the tide was pretty high a few porps were still visible surfacing occasionally. Great black backed gulls often followed them betraying their presence.
Another visit at the end of the short day found the tide at full ebb and then slack water. The odd porpoise showed just beyond the lighthouse but had it not been for the calm conditions I would probably have missed them. A family who had arrived earlier had seen them and I was surprised and delighted that on both my visits there were people there looking for and actually finding porpoises!good to see greg and Lisa are back from their travels and seeing their Ramsay porp's, welcome home!
A short vid of yesterday's porps put edited by Hannah from my bits of video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yChSfagY6Go
They were at least half a mile away but they were there! It is our intention to build a rock solid case for their protection over the coming weeks and months, let us know of any of your Pembrokeshire porpoise sightings, lets get them the protection they should have!
