The sea is a dominant feature in Cornwall and an intrinsic part of Cornwall’s heritage. For centuries the sea has provided livelihoods for families dependent on fishing. Its south west position jutting out into the Atlantic ocean means it has always been an important transport hub for mariners. Today the sea provides fun and adventure for surfers, kayakers, sailers and kitesurfers. Those who regularly go to sea will tell you what an amazing place it is. It is our aim to share this magic with visitors who can join one of our boat trips in Cornwall.

Exciting Boat Trips Cornwall

We believe boat trips Cornwall should be fun as well as informative. That’s why we use a RIB powerboat for our tours, which depart from Rock near Padstow. This super fast boat skims over the sea at great speed, proving an exhilarating ride for passengers. But our Cornwall boat trips are also designed to be informative and interesting, and we aim to open your eyes to the dramatic coastal scenery and abundance of marine wildlife in our waters.

So what exactly do you you see on a Cornwall boat trip?

Every trip is different. The weather and state of the sea alter the atmosphere and character of each trip. You never know what you might find along the way. But here are some of the things you can expect to see on one of our Cornwall boat trips.

• High, craggy cliffs covered in gorse and wild flowers
• Secluded coves and beaches
• Caves, rocky outcrops and dramatic rock formations
• Seals and dolphins
• Basking sharks (if you’re really lucky)
• Cormorants, Kittiwakes and Puffins (yes puffins can be seen in early summer)
• All sorts of fish, including the weird and wonderful sunfish

Witness Cornwall’s Wild Side

The Cornish coast is a true wilderness. On one of our boat trips in Cornwall you get to experience this wild side and escape the busy beaches and many distractions on land. But don’t take our work for it. Book yourself on to one of our sea safaris soon to experience the magic for yourself.

Is it the chicken or the egg that came first? Do gannets feed where there are lots of fish and so coincidentally we see dolphins or do the dolphins bring the fish to the surface so that’s why we always find dolphins when we see gannets feeding? Intuition tells me the latter is correct and luckily this is backed up by modern science (phew). The wikipedia entry for ‘bait ball’ tells us that when faced with predators, shoaling pelagic fish who have no cover in the open sea, abandon their normal rules of swimming at the same speed and direction for an attempt to swim into the middle of the shoal to distance themselves from the predator. The result of all the fish displaying this behaviour is the formation of a spherical bait ball. Our dolphins take advantage of this phenomenon by strategically working together to form a bait ball and then push this to the surface making the fish much easier for the dolphins to catch.

I have observed gannets following dolphins on many occasions, not feeding but just watching from height presumably waiting for a feeding event. Then occasionally luck would have it that we arrive with the boat when the dolphins have pushed a bait ball up to the surface and all hell breaks loose. The gannets often circle very tightly in a tall vortex and when an individual gannet spots a fish it folds it wings and plummets at up to 50mph penetrating the water as deep as 30 metres. These bait ball events are often very short lived lasting just five or ten minutes and only involving a small number of gannets and dolphins, sometimes though the feeding events can last thirty minutes and involve a hundred dolphins or more and forty or fifty gannets. The footage from this video was taken on the 25th of August 40 or 50 gannets were feeding and perhaps 50 or 60 dolphins.

A blog dedicated to gannets will follow with some pretty interesting facts about this the largest sea bird in the Atlantic.

Please also note that this blog contains (for the first time in our blogs) some rather snazzy html coding which opens the youtube video in another window, go me.

Youtube Video Link ‘Hugo & the Dolphins.mov’

This footage (link above) was taken last summer whilst returning from a power coasteering trip with Cornish Rock Tors. The dolphins followed us back into the Camel Estuary and performed a few jumps before returning to sea. You can make out their quite distinctive sickle shaped dorsal fins and darker colouring. Some of these dolphins were a good size with the largest two being 2.5 metres long by my reckoning. Click this link to read the bottlenose dolphin page on wikipedia, there is some fascinating information about their habits and biology. Particularly interesting is how dolphins sleep, how they communicate to each other, the fact they can hybridise so readily, their sight, how mothers and juveniles stay together for several years and how intelligent they are. I’ve extracted a little below.

‘Bottlenose dolphins live in groups typically of 10–30 members, called pods, but group size varies from single individuals up to more than 1,000. Their diet consists mainly of forage fish. Dolphins often work as a team to harvest fish schools, but they also hunt individually. Dolphins search for prey primarily using echolocation, which is similar to sonar. They emit clicking sounds and listen for the return echo to determine the location and shape of nearby items, including potential prey. Bottlenose dolphins also use sound for communication, including squeaks and whistles emitted from the blowhole and sounds emitted through body language, such as leaping from the water and slapping their tails on the water surface.

There have been numerous investigations of bottlenose dolphin intelligence. Research on bottlenose dolphins has examined mimicry, use of artificial language, object categorization and self-recognition. Their considerable intelligence has driven interaction with humans. Bottlenose dolphins are popular from aquarium shows and television programs such as Flipper. They have also been trained by militaries to locate sea mines or detect and mark enemy divers. In some areas, they cooperate with local fishermen by driving fish into their nets and eating the fish that escape. Some encounters with humans are harmful to the dolphins: people hunt them for food, and dolphins are killed inadvertently as a by-catch of tuna fishing.

The gestation period averages 12 months. Births can occur at any time of year, although peaks occur in warmer months.The young are born in shallow water, sometimes assisted by a (possibly male) “midwife”, and usually only a single calf is born. Twins are possible but rare. Newborn bottlenose dolphins are between 0.8–1.4 m (2.6–4.6 ft) 9–30 kg (20–66 lb) kilograms, with Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin infants generally smaller than common bottlenose dolphin infants. To accelerate nursing, the mother can eject milk from her mammary glands. The calf suckles for 18 to 20 months, and continues to closely associate with its mother for several years after weaning. Females sexually mature at ages 5–13, males at ages 9–14. Females reproduce every two to six years. Georgetown University professor Janet Mann argues the strong personal behavior among male calves is about bond formation and benefits the species in an evolutionary context. She cites studies showing these dolphins as adults are inseparable, and that early bonds aid protection as well as in locating females.’

Keep watching the seas.

Today we had an incredible time with the dolphins. A massive pod including some tiny juveniles stayed with us for 30 mins. Lots of rising, blowhole noises and jumping ensued. The you tube video is 12mins long but worth watching in full as the surprises just keep coming. Click on the link and then share it anyway which way you can!

AMAZING DOLPHIN VIDEO FROM 19TH AUGUST 2011

Both common dolphin species are medium sized dolphins. Adults range between 1.9 and 2.5 (6.2 and 8.2 ft), long, and can weigh between 80 and 235 KILOGRAMS (180 and 520 lb), although a range between 80 and 150 kilograms (180 and 330 lb) is more common.Males are generally longer and heavier.The color pattern on the body is unusual. The back is dark and the belly is white, while on each side is an hourglass pattern colored light grey, yellow or gold in front and dirty grey in back. They have long, thin rostrums with up to 50–60 small, sharp, interlocking teeth on each side of each jaw.

The Short-beaked common dolphin has a gestation period of 10 to 11 months. The newborn calf has a length of between 70 and 100 centimeters (2.3 and 3.3 ft) and weights about 10 kilograms (22 lb).

Common Dolphin Wikipedia entry……

All these pictures were taken form our boat on trips in the summer of 2011.

www.ecologicalphotography.co.u​k

Feather Star Shrimp

Jewel Anemone

Devonshire Cup Coral

Wikipedia extract: ‘The ocean sunfish, Mola mola, or common mola, is the heaviest known bony fish in the world. It has an average adult weight of 1,000 kg. The species is native to tropical and temperate waters around the globe. It resembles a fish head with a tail, and its main body is flattened laterally. Sunfish can be as tall as they are long when their dorsal and ventral fins are extended. Sunfish live on a diet that consists mainly of jellyfish, but because this diet is nutritionally poor, they consume large amounts in order to develop and maintain their great bulk. Females of the species can produce more eggs than any other known vertebrate.’

Also bumped into a juvenile female Atlantic Grey Seal way out at sea, I haven’t seen one that far out before. I know that they hunt in water that deep (typically 60-70m) you just don’t tend to see them floating around like that. This may just be a nature moment ‘note to self’ as Benny just told me it’s a boring story. I found it interesting anyway but I guess that’s why I do what I do.