The promise of some nice warm
settled weather made us decide to jump aboard the Stena Europe and try and film
as much of the wildlife as possible. Thanks to our friends in Stena Line our
cabins and tickets were arranged overnight and we boarded at midnight ready to
start in Rosslare on Sunday morning.
Thanks to Steve Rosser for
filling in the details of the morning’s sightings, and see below post for more
details!
…This afternoon the two
Steve’s jumped ship to be replaced by Hannah. The Porpoises continued to show
well and I began to get my eye in with the video bins.
As we approached the Irish
Side Hannah spotted distant dolphins feeding and breaching. In the perfect
conditions we spotted them at extreme range, maybe a couple of miles away!
Normally common dolphins will come into the bow but having just passed a pod of
15-20 which kept their distance, we could only hope these might give us a show
and allow me to film them and again I managed to get some footage.
Just to add the Icing to the
cake, some Risso’s turned
up as we passed the Tusker and brought our tally to four species with over
sixty individual sightings averaging over ten sightings per hour an incredible
total and without doubt a cetacean spectacular!
The Irish Sea can be grey and
lumpy with a bit of reputation as stormy but over
the past few days it has been heart achingly beautiful with
such combinations of colours and cloud formations as would
have inspired Turner to a masterpiece.
It has also been populated by
a host of cetaceans with Minke Whale Risso’s Dolphin, Common Dolphin and many
porpoises showing in these most favourable conditions.
Tuesday dawned overcast and
calm in Rosslare, perfect for viewing and we set off on another day’s fantastic
cetacean recording session. Porpoises continued to show well and a glimpse of a
couple of Risso’s, were a small taster of things to come. We continued sighting
animals right across the route with a formidable 42 individual sightings by the
time we reached Fishguard.
Hannah and myself started the
return trip full of hope but as the miles passed by with just a few sightings,
we began to wonder if the spectacular was fizzling out.
Wham we started hitting
porpoises about an hour off Rosslare. It was nonstop with Hannah struggling to keep up it went
quiet for a while and then as we approached the harbour we had Risso’s all over
the place!.
The evening hour was the
flattest calm I can remember and
we added even more porpoises some Risso’s and Commons as a fantastic sunbseyt
set the sky ablaze
A small pod of about 10
coming into our bows in the twilight as we left the bridge and headed for our
cabins exhausted but happy!
