What a glorious day on the North Cornish Coast, I am already feeling really lucky to be going on a boat trip with Cornish Sea Tours, Cornwall Wildlife Trust, Cornwall Seal group and other Polzeath Voluntary Marine Conservation Area volunteers; little did I know this was going to be one of the most truly amazing days ....EVER!
We met Matt - our Skipper; ran the usual safety checks, waterproofs on, lifejacket; camera, binoculars.... Time to get onboard the RIB and set off. It was 10:30am, I was in control of the seabird survey, the sun was shining, my first seabird is a Gannet diving beneath the waves, with graceful speed and precision. I had been on the boat only a matter of minutes.
We are past Polzeath, out of the estuary and we see our first Seal, a darkly coloured juvenile most likely a male, just south from Trevose Headland, Sue takes careful note of all possible observations. Each seal can be individually recognised and photo-catalogued in a database due to their unique fur patterns. From this information we can learn the seals visits, groupings and behaviour. Satelite tagging can also be used and recently has been in Brittany on eight seals, one of which had made the journey to the Isles of Scilly within a week. Although it is a successful way to record seal behaviour, this is a more intrusive method of recording the seals than photographing them from a respectable distance. We next record seals at Deadmans Cove and Quies Rock.
It is nearly midday when we suspect we may be lucky enough to see the Pod of dolphins that frequent the Camel Estuary, everyone on board is really excited from events so far, but they do not show up at this point…
Next onto Gulland Island, a beautiful paradise for many creatures; seals and seabirds – It is hard to believe that it was used as an area of target practice during World War II! Here we see three more seals, one a beautiful haulout female with dark markings on her side back and head.
At almost 1pm three adventurous Common Dolphins (two adults and a baby) joined our wake playfully swimming and breaching next to our RIB. In a matter of moments there were 6, then 10, then 20 going up to about 30 dolphins surrounding us! It was AMAZING! And the best thing was I think they were having as much fun looking at us as we were having looking at them. I took some movies following a couple of them through the water:
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We enjoyed the company of the dolphins for a while before heading to Tintagel, here we spotted some blue jellyfish of an almost violet colour.
We set off for Beeny Sisters up the coast, an area rich in marine life and today was no exception. We were surrounded by seals, Sue with her quick eye and camera was recording them fast but I have a suspicion the rest of us were losing count! This area is away from human activity, has a suitable beach in clear view from the water, has plenty of offshore rocks and sandy sea bottom; and is rich in kelp, fish and all the things that seals love, so it’s no wonder there were so many here. Most of the seals recorded today have been female or juvenile, which is quite interesting to note as during winter the seal population was very male dominated.
Seals sleep upright in the water, and sink down. As the CO2 levels build up in their bodies it causes a reflex fin kick enabling the seal to come up for air whilst staying asleep.
We spent some time recording the seals around Beeny Sisters and Saddle Rock, we pulled out a large abandoned fishermans net and continued the journey, this time heading towards home. We encountered the Common Dolphins a second time, they were just as playful as the first time we had seen them, such an incredible sight to behold.
Soon we were back at Puffin Island, near the Rumps. Here we saw two beautiful Puffins swimming close to the rocks, it seems strange to think that their bills turn grey in the winter!
Time to head back to Rock, the day was a huge success with over 35 seals recorded, 30-40 Common Dolphins and many hundreds of seabirds including Razorbills, Guillimots, Cormorants, Shags, Blackback and Herring Gulls, Gannets and Puffins. I would like to thank everyone onboard for such an awesome day and especially Abby and Sue for organising it and Matt at Cornish Sea Tours for being such a good skipper.
Heres the net we pulled out of the water:
