Tour at 1300
The weather was still nice but again alittle cold, we headed to the same area as this morning and at last on the way we saw many Harbour Porpoises, saw some surfacing only a meter of two from the boat and you could see them clearly surfing the swells. We saw a quick glimpse of a Minke pretty soon in the tour but that was all we saw of this whale so after a bit of waiting we headed further offshore and it wasn't long before we came across two Minke Whales together. They never surfaced at the same time but you could tell that there was two there because they had different dorsal fins. It is very unusual to see a pair of Minkes together as mothers and calves usually seperate before migrating back to the feeding grounds. After a while they seperated and we watched one whilst the other whale watching boats from different companies watched the other surfacing slowly and sometimes close to the boat too, to the point that you can hear that amzing "whoossh" of air escaping their nasal passages. On the way back we also saw another Minke Whale and so Three individual Minkes we saw really well on this tour but none we were able to identify 100% from the research catalogues we have onboard.
Tour at 0900
Today was just lovely. calm seas and blue skies what more can you ask for, well maybe to make it a little bit warmer as there was a nip in the air making all of our passengers make use of our free overalls and blankets we have onboard. This morning was a little bit different to the mornings we have had over the last couple of days as there there seemed to be less whales around even Harbour Porpoises which we have been seeing loads of. Maybe due to the Perigee "Super Moon" which is as much as 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moons of 2012 according to Nasa's science news. The first sign we saw, and we headed towards, was a big flock of feeding birds, mainly seagulls, and a couple of fulmars, puffins and gannets but no whales. There was a lot of birds feeding in this area so we had high hopes but nope no whales to be seen. We headed further offshore but still nothing. Eventually we got word from another whale watching vessel in another area of a pair of Minke Whales they were watching so we were on our way. Once we got there the whales were always quite far away but or patience paid off and one surfaced just 10-15 meters from our boat. As it was quite late in the tour we couldn't spend to long so and we began our journey back to the harbour. On the way home however, we saw another Minke and had to stop. We were a bit late back to the harbour but in the end got to see two Minke Whales and many plunging Gannets, Puffins, Guillemots, Razorbills, Seagulls and Fulmars.