As good as it gets!

Fran took our Summer interns, Arwen, Dan, Daf and Keira, and her Thursday Photo ID volunteers Dawn and Chris, down to Ramsey Sound(Copper Mine) this afternoon.

The porpoises showed well (minimum 9) and 4 sunfish (Mola mola) also seen well by everyone, a first for Dan! Its the Interns last survey before they head off in their seperate paths, they have been great and deserved a special final survey to remember us at Sea Trust by!

Strumble Diary 28/08/26

Just a short session with Stevo this afternoon on almost low tide. circa 4-6 porpoises showing off the lighthouse.

from John O'Sullivan

Hi Cliff, currently on Bardsey, yesterday in flat calm conditions there were Risso's in numbers. There were a minimum of 12 animals but it seemed likely there were more. They included three mothers with small calves, one was tiny and the mother kept leaving it on the surface when it dived. It looked bizarre lolling about on the surface with its tiny dorsal fin. Regular Commons offshore too and 3 Porpoises. Sadly sightings of Risso's still few and far between, here at Strumble John

Strumble Diary 28/08/2026 (One Watch 3 Different Cetaceans)

 A superb watch this morning. When I arrived 09.30ish Harry + a birder were there and informed me of 9 Rissos sighted, four close in and five further out, earlier. I managed to catch three closer in but didn't see the more distant ones that they had seen. Lovely mother and calf sightings for at least and hour off and on before they moved off. What followed was almost continual sightings of commons and Porpoise feeding very close together at times. Caught two marked and returning Porpoise in the same shot which was a bonus as it doesn't happen that often. Hopefully more Rissos tomorrow.

 

 

Unusual markings on this Rissos calf

 

Big blubber and pelagic Bottles from Carrie Haughton.

Carrie is a Sea Trust volunteer, and also works with "Celtic Deep" boat trips... Hey Cliff, We had 2 fin whales yesterday on the way out to the deep, and a pod of huge pelagic bottlenose dolphins on the way back in! They were massive! I've never seen anything but commons out there!

Interestingly four years ago, almost to the day, we also ran into a pod of pelagic Bottlenose Dolphins on an August Bank Holiday trip, the only Bottles I have seen out there in over 20 years of survey trips!

Strumble Diary: from Andrew Crowder

A Crowder 09:31 (7 hours ago) to me Spent a couple of hours at Strumble from 13:00 yesterday. An unobtrusive group of 7-8 Common Dolphin early were the only cetaceans seen. A few Med. Gulls were the best birds. Scanning the gulls dip feeding immediately below the cliff, I could see a shoal of large fish which must have been driving smaller prey to the surface. Regards Likely the same pod i saw earlier, thanks Andrew!

Strumble Diary 23/8/26

Sunny,Wind NE2. Sea State 3. Low tide 11.09. An hour spent at Strumble, 11.15-12.15 so more or less at the bottom of the tide so not surprisingly no Porpoises seen. Birdwise, nothing out of the ordinary but luckily the gannets put me onto a quite distant pod of circa 12-15 Common Dolphins which included at least two calves. They were in sight for about twenty minutes as they traversed left to right travelling at a steady pace. Maybe nothing to shout about by Strumble standards, but there are not too many places that only an hours watch would produce such a sighting!

Strumble Diary 17-18th August 2026

 Two for one in this entry combining two surveys from this week. Firstly Tuesday 18th. The morning brought the rising tide and a reasonably overcast sky. The wind was light from the NW giving a moderate swell. It was a relatively quiet session with not a single fin spotted in the first hour or so. Almost at the top of the tide a small pod of Common Dolphin crossed East to West quickly heading out to the open water of the channel. Shortly after a single Porpoise moved up the tide showing twice before that too moved on. I ended the session shortly after.

 Afternoon Wednesday 19th August

This was a much better day weatherwise with mostly blue skys and a strong Westerly breeze. I was on the dropping tide and looking forward to some decent action in the swells. My first sighting was a single Common Dolphin way out to the NW in the outer tide race. My eye was taken by a Sunfish with gulls in attendance some 300Mtrs or so out from the lookout which slowly drifted away on the tide. Then the Porpoise started coming in and although mostly distant at this stage of the tide were active and showing well. More came in as the tide dropped away over which I had a good hour and fifteen minutes of almost continuous action. There was a break then as the porpoise moved off until just before leaving a pod of several Commons came from the North and quickly rounded the Lighthouse and out of sight.

 

 

A Challenge Completed? Maybe!

This year we've been very fortunate to have a small group of five Bottlenose dolphins that seem to have taken up residence in Fishguard Bay. This allows us to frequently record their actions on an almost daily basis.  It became apparent early on that one in particular had a strange growth on the right side of it's head close to the jaw line. 

 

 Naturally, it made it very easy to identify and pick it out amongst the other dolphins. It also sparked my curiosity and made me want to study it a bit closer, so I set myself a challenge of getting closer more detailed shots of the growth. This has taken many attempts and hundreds of images to try and catch the animal on the right side and close enough to get the detail I wanted. Being that it's the most active and playful of all five it was not an easy task. However, I have managed to build up a better picture (excuse the pun) of what's going on. The following images are the best I've been able to capture to date.

First of all I thought it was just a growth, somewhat like a skin tag gone wild so to speak, but there's more there than I thought. An image from a few weeks ago made me think I saw a tooth in the growth and that's what set the challenge off in my mind. 

 It would seem that this is the case. It has indeed got teeth in the growth which came as a surprise as I got better images. So I feel that this is not so much a growth but rather a birth defect which occurred in the womb. 

 

Another surprising fact that came to light with better images is that the upper right jaw to which the growth is attached does not have any teeth at all. See images directly above and below.

 It had vanished from the group for a week or so and I was quite worried about that but a few days ago it returned, to my relief. 

Having watched it closely over the past weeks it does not seem to affect it to any great extent. It obviously still feeds well and looks really healthy despite the growth. It's very active and is usually the one to instigate social/play activity and frequently breaches. Playing with seaweed seems to be a favourite thing along with close touch, eg, rolling and bumping with the others which they will often do for prolonged periods between foraging.

 

 

 

I'll continue to follow it for the remainder of the summer and bring updates on any changes that may occur. My hope is that you all find this as interesting as I have. Ken B.