It was a cloudy but bright morning. On arriving at the pier, I soon met up with my fellow MARINElife Surveyor Nick and Wildlife Ambassador Grahame. We boarded the Oldenburg and were warmly greeted by Captain Jason and other members of the crew. Leaving the harbour, we prepared our forms and started the survey.

On the crossing we passed lots of pairs of Guillemot, which mostly consisted of Dad and baby. We also saw one group of thirty Manx Shearwater feeding in amongst rafts of floating seaweed.  In the Landing Bay, we were just preparing to end the survey when a member of the crew drew our attention to two Bottlenose Dolphin which had just appeared close to the island.  It was a brief sighting, but we had time to notice that one of them had a large notch at the bottom of its dorsal fin.

After disembarking I walked to the Village to get a drink in the Marisco Tavern and then decided to head to The Ugly, where I could watch out to see if the dolphins returned.  Sadly, there were no more sightings, and it was soon time to return to the jetty.

The return journey was very quiet with very few sightings of any birds. Every quarter of an hour we popped into the cabin to read the instruments. On one of the visits, we were told that the boat’s sea temperature monitor had just recorded 20.3 degrees centigrade; this was the highest any of the bridge crew had ever seen it record.

On arrival back in Ilfracombe, we were joined by the Wildlife Ambassador and learnt that on the way back he had seen another Bottlenose Dolphin.  We all thanked the crew for another great trip.

Judith Tatem and Nick Scott, Research Surveyors for MARINElife (Registered Charity No. 1110884; Registered Company No. 5057367)

Weather

Wind NW-NE 1-2, good visibility, sea state 1-2, cloudy