Jumping Risso's

On Sunday the 5^th August interns Sarah and Lee boarded the Stena Europa for their first ferry survey under the guidance of seasoned volunteer Steve Rosser.  The conditions were pretty good with a calm sea and the sun shining as the ferry left Fishguard.  Sightings started rather quickly with the help of the crew on board who alerted us to bottlenose dolphins, three adults and a juvenile were playing together by a small boat just outside the harbour.  The sightings continued with an unidentified cetacean that was too far away to get a good look at and this was shortly followed by three harbour porpoise.  Then we spotted something in the water which at first we thought could be a seal but were unsure as it was a similar size but wasn’t moving in the right way.  Steve took a good look and identified it as a leatherback turtle which excitingly was a first time sighting for both interns.

Then the excitement really began….. a large splash was sighted by Lee in the distance and a minute later a Risso’s dolphin fully breached out of the water.  A minute later, very close to the ferry, two more fins were spotted,but this time they belonged to two sharks (possibly blue sharks).  Another couple of porpoise were spotted in the distance and surprisingly were the last porpoise seen on either crossing.     

Then the common dolphin sightings started with a pair at 200 meters that moved in closer to the ferry and were spotted again a few minutes later alongside the ferry.  More common dolphins were sighted in the distance, this time a group of five were splashing about and playing together.

Then Risso’s started popping up all over the place…...a singular Risso’s fin in the distance was followed by another closer in splashing around.  Then to our great delight one popped up just 50m in front of the boat before traveling along the port side allowing us to get a picture or two.       

Our outward journey ended with Sarah spotting a group of three dolphins, they were not showing much though so identification between common and bottlenose was difficult.     

The return journey started well with four more Risso’s spotted quite early on.  This was shortly followed by a group of four common dolphins at quite a distance away.  All went quite with no sightings made for over an hour but then a lone minke was spotted by Steve.  The minke resurfaced a minute later and Steve alerted Sarah and Lee just in time as they caught a glimpse of their first minke whale before it disappeared under the surface again.  Unfortunately the minke disappeared too quickly for us to get a picture but the sunset was pretty amazing nonetheless. 

 

A big thank you to captain Richard Davies and the crew on the Stena Europefor a really nice survey that was thoroughly enjoyed by all.