2012 Season So Far!
April and the Easter holidays are here which means one thing… we’re back at sea! In the past week the 2012 season has kicked off and how great it is to be back afloat!
Over the first few trips of the year we've had some great sightings including becoming reacquainted with the resident harbour porpoise. Last Saturday was particularly special when we had around 12 animals swimming around Sula Beag. It is Ewan's third season as an SLS guide but he reckons it was his best porpoise sighting to date... must've been something else! We feel very privileged to sail past both golden and white tailed eagle pairs on most of our trips and again we've already had some smashing views of them. Fingers crossed they'll be successful this year and rear fledglings, we're all very excited to follow their story throughout the season. April is also an exciting month for seabirds... they are now returning to their breeding sites and we've had lovely views of puffins, shearwaters, fulmars and kittiwakes to name a few.
Another excellent sign for a good season ahead is the plankton samples we've been collecting. They have been incredibly rich with great numbers of copepods and other tiny beasties, fascinating to watch! Sula Beag’s Fish Finder has also been showing fantastic thick plankton levels so with the food building up we're hoping we'll be seeing some larger animals very soon! We heard several reports last week of bottlenose dolphins in the area and there has already been rumours of an early minke whale sighting by a local fishing boat so all eyes will be peeled over the next couple of weeks... who is going to take home the first Mars Bar of the season??! Basking sharks are also being reported in good numbers off the coast of Ireland at the moment, from the tagged shark we found last year we know some travel up our way after being seen in Irish waters so will it be another early return for the sharks similar to last year?!
We’ll be keeping our Facebook and Twitter pages up to date so please follow us here for daily sightings.
2012 season is a go!
Ruth :-)
Over the first few trips of the year we've had some great sightings including becoming reacquainted with the resident harbour porpoise. Last Saturday was particularly special when we had around 12 animals swimming around Sula Beag. It is Ewan's third season as an SLS guide but he reckons it was his best porpoise sighting to date... must've been something else! We feel very privileged to sail past both golden and white tailed eagle pairs on most of our trips and again we've already had some smashing views of them. Fingers crossed they'll be successful this year and rear fledglings, we're all very excited to follow their story throughout the season. April is also an exciting month for seabirds... they are now returning to their breeding sites and we've had lovely views of puffins, shearwaters, fulmars and kittiwakes to name a few.
Another excellent sign for a good season ahead is the plankton samples we've been collecting. They have been incredibly rich with great numbers of copepods and other tiny beasties, fascinating to watch! Sula Beag’s Fish Finder has also been showing fantastic thick plankton levels so with the food building up we're hoping we'll be seeing some larger animals very soon! We heard several reports last week of bottlenose dolphins in the area and there has already been rumours of an early minke whale sighting by a local fishing boat so all eyes will be peeled over the next couple of weeks... who is going to take home the first Mars Bar of the season??! Basking sharks are also being reported in good numbers off the coast of Ireland at the moment, from the tagged shark we found last year we know some travel up our way after being seen in Irish waters so will it be another early return for the sharks similar to last year?!
We’ll be keeping our Facebook and Twitter pages up to date so please follow us here for daily sightings.
2012 season is a go!
Ruth :-)
posted by Sea Life Surveys at
1:48 pm
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