Sunday Sea Birds: Gannets (part 1)

The following post was made with images trawled from the archive of our/this WinW blog ,a really fascinating historical digital document.
Many thanks to Ken and Rich,(again!)

Images 1.2.3.© Ken Barnett/Sea Trust 4.© Rich Crossen/Sea Trust

Sunday Sea Birds: Gannets (part 1)

There are few Seabirds around our coasts that can match the Gannet in either physical size or sheer magnificence.
Here in Pembrokeshire where they are a relatively common sight,, we probably take them a bit for granted. But as a cetacean enthusiast, they have an extra special value to me. On many, many occasions, they have shown me where the cetaceans are!

 Of course cetaceans and Gannets are both fish eaters.and often the Gannets will seek our porpoises or dolphins because they will often drive fish up to the surface making them more available to the diving Gannets!
Gannets can also show us what cetaceans are feeding on.

I remember a rare day out on the Cartlett Lady some years ago when after several hours cruising we still had not found any dolphins. Skipper Andy Rickard and myself up on the flying Bridge were straining our eyes to the utmost, but still they eluded us.We were out in the Celtic Deep around twenty miles out from St Anne's Head and it was getting to the time when we would have to start making our way in.

Of the the hundreds of times we have surveyed, both aboard the "Celtic Wildcat" with Nick o'Sullivan or Andrew on the "Cartlett Lady", i would not need to use all the fingers of one hand to count the trips where we had failed to connect with any dolphins. Resting my binoculars on the perspex screen of the flying bridge, I somehow managed to spot what looked like a blizzard several miles away. 

"OK, said Andrew, One last try!" and he opened up the engines heading towards where I had indicated the "blizzard" to be. Self doubt is a terrible thing, and i was beginning to wonder if i had really seen what i thought i had seen, with the boat making twenty knots taking us further away from port, my binoculars were useless on the bucking deck. Thankfully Andy's eyes are extremely sharp and after a couple of anxious minutes he got onto my "Blizzard". Of course the "Blizzard was a feeding frenzy of hundreds of feeding Gannets and common dolphins! The gannets really saved the day that time!

Pembrokeshire hosts the 3rd largest colony of Gannets in the UK! Grassholm remains the third largest gannetry in the UK; by 2009 holding approximately 15% of the UK and Irish population and 9.5% of the world population (Murray, 2009).
Bob Haycock: Ref: Pembrokeshire Birds Avifauna,
(http://pembsbirds.squarespace.com/avifauna/category/gannet0)