Wednesday was to be something I’d been really excited about for ages, a boat trip with the brilliant Sealife Surveys. They are well known in the wildlife community, and given the thumbs up from Chris Packham and Gordon Buchanan, so I wasn’t going to go with any of the other tours! The guy who owns the cabin we were staying in works with them too so got ourselves a bonus little discount 
The boat started in Tobermoray and went up the Sound of Mull to the Isle of Coll and then back again. Heads up, this is a long post, I got excited!
We weren’t even out of the harbour before we caught a glimpse of a harbour PORPOISE. And round the coast a bit we saw both golden eagles and white tailed sea eagles flying over the trees. It wasn’t until they started getting mobbed by some crows that you could really tell quite how huge they are. They were pretty far away and there was no way I could tell the difference between the two. But confusingly the way to tell the difference isn’t whether one has a white tail or not! Adult sea eagles do have a white tail but the juveniles don’t, while golden eagles adults have a brown tail but the juveniles have white. So if you see an eagle with a white tail its either an adult sea eagle or a juvenile golden eagle. Confused?! The differences are more subtle – the sea eagle is a bit bigger with huge plank-like wings and a wider wedge shape tail. The golden eagle is a bit smaller, with a proportionally longer tail and smaller head. Like I said, they were quite far away and I couldn’t see any of this stuff.
As we got further out into the sea we saw so many SEA BIRDS, including auks and gannets. Auks are very penguin-like, only they can fly in the air as well as diving really deep to catch fish and crustaceans (I think the guillemot dives 80m deep!). The common guillemots were either bobbing around on the surface or flapping wildly through the air. Their feet are really far back which act a bit like a rudder to help them in the water, but means they can’t walk very well.
We saw razorbills too which look very similar to guillemots, but sadly no puffins, boo hoo. The gannets however were amazing, huge white birds with black wing tips and yellow patch on their head. Very graceful flyers, soaring around and above us, but when they gathered in groups you knew they were going to do their party trick – they tuck their wings in, make themselves look like an airstreamed dart and dive (from pretty high up) into the water at speeds of 60mph. What?!? I’ve seen this on TV but to see it in real life was incredible. They even have special air sacs in their face to cushion it from the impact! The gannets are fishing, having spotted a fish from way up high they dive straight into the water to grab it.
Unlike the little guillemot who is bobbing around on the surface, they just suddenly disappear from view and will be swimming (like a penguin because its an auk) around under the surface. Groups of feeding gannets may also indicate dolphins are in the area as they feed on the same food so that got everyones hopes up! We also saw fulmars, shags, kittiwakes, artic terns, manx shearwtaer, long tailed skua and big old black backed gulls.
Onwards to the Isle of Coll, and our first sighting of a minke whale. A WHALE! Minkes are about 6-7m long so not huge in whale terms. They don’t do that tail fluking that some other whales do, instead we saw its curved back and dorsal fin as it came up to the surface to breathe. It does this 3 or 4 times in fairly quick succession before it dives much deeper and you won’t see it for about 15-20 minutes. And then it could be anywhere as it has been swimming around! The one we saw first was an adult, and then we saw another one the other side of Coll which they think is a younger one.
Also on Coll were tonnes and tonnes of SEALS, both common and grey all hanging out on the rocks together. The common seals were the ones we’d seen a few days ago, the grey seals are a bit bigger and have a distinctively different looking face. Its hard to describe but the common seals have quite a small round face while the greys have a more dog-like face.
On our way back down the Sound of Mull we saw all the seabirds again and everyone was getting pretty good at identifying them. There was also a group of gannets not too far away doing their amazing diving, so obviously feeding. I noticed the American girl next to me had her eyes shut, which I thought was kind of weird until she said later as soon as she’d seen those gannets she’d been willing the dolphins to show up with all her might. Still kind of weird, but who cares because it worked! There was a surge of excitment as we spotted one BOTTLENOSE DOLPHIN jump out the water in front of the boat. My heart was racing, I couldn’t quite believe it. And unlike the Minke whale which was quite hard to see as it was only a bit of dorsal fin above the water, this dolphin had jumped clear out, I could completely see it, no bincoulars needed at all! And then the boat was surrounded by them, a pod of at least 12 dolphins all swimming alongside, diving under the front of the boat, jumping out of the water. There were even 2 babies, probably only a couple of weeks old, they were grey/white which you can make out in the pictures. They seemed to stay for ages, so close I felt I could touch them. The American girl was practically exploding with excitement (so was everyone to be honest, including the guides), it was what we’d all secretly wished for but didn’t want to get our hopes up.
Exhausted from the excitement, we went into the cabin to look at some plankton one of the guides had collected from near the first minke whale sighting under the microscope. This calmed us all down a bit, but was actually really really interesting. There was so much, most of which you could hardly seen without the microscope – zooplankton was all the little living things (there was a teeny lobster baby and all sorts of other things with weird names) and the phytoplankon which is all the plant stuff. Phytoplankton absorbs 50% of the worlds carbon dioxide (I hope I remembered that right!) so its very important.
Off the boat, we collapsed in the pub to briefly recover from the most amazing experience ever. I also realised quite how sun/wind burnt my face was, it was pretty red for the next few days!
HIGHLIGHTS – er everything!
LOWLIGHT – realising quite how unbelievable red my face was