Scilly Pelagic

Last Tuesday evening saw us on one of Joe Penders shark fishing/birders pelagic, where we chummed 5 miles south west of St Mary's, Tony Brown had other ideas and decided to chum just after a mile out ! then again at two mile, and then Three.......

TB pre chum...........

Joe's catch and release program has been going for a number of years now and has had some recoveries as far as the Cape Verde islands some several thousands of miles away !!


It was great to see BLUE SHARK up close and personnel, with only the one specimen caught that evening but double figure catches are common.

tag fitted

shaking hands with a blue shark.....

So to the birding, I wasn't expecting to see to much being fairly late in the seabird calendar but we did see at least 25 SOOTY SHEARWATERS some coming fairly close to the boat, at least 15 STORM PETREL, these tiny little birds are amazing how they spend there whole time out at sea.

sooty's

stormies

Four adult SABINES GULLS were seen late on, and several Bonxies passed as did several Manx's.

The most amazing experience of the evening was the sight of some 200 to 300 Common Dolphin, where many came up to the boat to check us out and played around in the surf, and even riding the bow on a number of occasions, truly magical experience.

TB post chum........