Seal smooches… Sunday brought us one of our most intimate snorkel encounters. About 10 minutes after we had dropped the lovely Matt and Becky in the water this curious grey seal came to have a look. Becky ended up befriending this individual to the point where she received 3 kisses on her head. What a gorgeous interaction! As we always like to keep our distance from the animals we see on our trips, we were truly amazed when this animal decided it was going to become best friends, failing to leave Becky’s side the entire time she was in the water. Not 10 minutes after getting back on the boat we had our beautiful interaction with our first Risso’s of the year (see previous post). this trip also included the following sightings: - 12 cormorant - 3 jackdaw - 4 grey seal - 50+ shag - 5 GBB gull - 3 rock pipit - 1 lobster - 3 carrion crow - 5 oystercatcher - 20+ moon jellyfish - 10000+ bait fish - 2 shelduck - 1 whimbrel - 2 raven - 6 Risso’s dolphin (3 mums, 3 calves) - 1 harbour porpoise - 2 guillemot If snorkelling is your thing and you would like to join us on one of these trips please don’t hesitate to give us a call! If you could also like, comment and share this post to widen our incredible community of wildlife loving friends. All photos by Em Forster

Rare Risso’s Yesterday’s 2 hour snorkel trip brought our first Risso’s dolphins of the year! We had just brought our two lovely clients back on Free Spirit after their gorgeous seal encounter and were heading out from Towan beach when several fins popped up directly in front of us. The tall, thin fins of varying colour made them instantly identifiable as Risso’s. After they came up for a second time we realised there were 3 adult females with 3 little calves. We waited around the area they were hunting in and ended up having eight different interactions with this lovely little pod before they eventually dived for a last time and didn’t surface for the 25 minutes we waited before heading back! It never fails to amaze me how long some of our marine mammals can hold their breath and it’s remarkable that the little calves can hold their breath just as long as their experiences mothers when diving down to great depths to hunt cuttlefish. Please do leave a like, comment and share! And if you’d like to come and join us while we’re having all this beautiful weather don’t hesitate to send us a message. We look forward to seeing you soon on Free Spirit! All photos by Em Forster

Lovely day out today and great to see a Black Guillemot!!