What a day... a 0400hrs start and a 1930hrs finish, ten hours of which were on the boat off Staithes, North Yorkshire, leading two pelagics for Yorkshire Coast Nature, in increasingly benign, warm and sunny conditions.
Too tired to give it the lyrical waxing it deserves right now, but in brief, we went into the day on the back of a very poor Minke season so far (just a handful here and the odd one there so far along the Yorkshire coast), a very poor seabird season (with minimal skuas and zero large shearwaters in the North Sea as whole so far), and little in the way of encouraging sightings from land or sea.
We came out of it with:
A minimum of 20 Minke Whales, with up to ten around the boat at any given time;
a Cory's Shearwater, giving two brief but cracking close fly-bys;
a Balearic Shearwater heading purposely south; a single Manxie (three shearwaters of three species!); ten Bonxies and one Arctic Skua;
many Lion's Mane jellyfish; epic feeding frenzies of Gannets, Fulmars, seals and whales (which we 'parked' in the midst of); Harbour Porpoise; Arctic, Common and Sandwich Terns;
Red Admirals, a Peacock and Painted Lady, all over five miles out; and most gratifingly, two affirmingly happy groups of clients who had unrivalled, bespoke access to this quintessentially Yorkshire extravaganza.... Fancy joining us? Have a look here....
