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Our Spirit cruise saw the first Osprey of the season at the weekend. Spirit was heading back from her 10:00 sailing whilst onboard guide, Debbie, was talking to our customers about the many Gannets that had been spotted feeing earlier in the trip. The skipper, Gwyn, gave Debbie the heads up that Mischief was approaching and as she turned, she spotted an Osprey overhead. It had a fish in its talons (they feed almost exclusively on fish) and took its lunch off over to the black isle. Osprey usually return to the same territories each summer after spending the winter on the continent of Africa. So watch this space to see if this is the same Osprey that we have been watching for the last few seasons and has been nicknamed Kyle due to his ring tag reading KY1E.

We had such a great start to our season! With the discounted tickets for locals, our boats were full and the sunshine was out on our first day of 2023. Mischief was lucky enough to see dolphins out by Fort George and sat a distance off whilst Bonnie showed us her refined hunting skills, catching a salmon. Spirit headed out under the bridge in beautiful conditions and were lucky enough to see an otter! Spirit is no longer a wildlife watching trip but we don’t run away from it when it does pop up! And the dolphins were back the next day too with Bonnie and her calf messing around under and around our boat. Such calm waters allowed for great spotting conditions so many seals were spotted bobbing in the water around Whiteness sands. A fantastic start to the…

Whilst October has been a challenging month for spotting the dolphins, the other wildlife has come out in full force as the temperatures begin to drop. We have had multiple sightings of our White-tail sea eagle, lots of porpoise activity including a mother and calf who circled our RIB for a while. Just when you think porpoise can’t get any smaller they have a calf only 60cm long! The grey seals are preparing themselves for pupping season so shortly we’ll start seeing the young ones around on the sand banks and the common seals are busy putting on extra layers of fat to survive the harsh winters up here. We’ve been watching the juvenile gannets hard at work perfecting their diving techniques in the waters around the Kessock bridge and we’ve had guillemots and razor bills head all the way…

  As we move into the last handful of weeks, we can look back at a fantastic summer! It’s been a great summer with not only loads of dolphins, but also a whale, porpoise, sunfish, otters, seals and thousands of seabirds including gannets, guillemots, razorbills, puffins, cormorants and shags plus a juvenile and adult white-tailed sea eagle. Its also been a great season for the resident dolphins with at least three new calves born this summer, all within a couple of weeks of each other including Spirtle’s first calf. We can’t wait to see what Autumn will bring us. Last year we started seeing Basking sharks surfacing out towards the town of Nairn so we have everything crossed that they will make a reappearance this year. Around this time, the porpoise start to move further into the firth and of…

Monday 9:30 – We left at high tide with some strong winds, so we had quite choppy conditions for our run out to Chanonry. Just as we had slowed down to begin making our way through the narrows there was a splash just off the point. After waiting for bit, we were rewarded with a huge leap out of the water buy a young dolphin! 3 of them were in at the point and headed over to our boat and ran alongside as we were heading over to Fort George. At Fort George they peeled off and as we watched and waited as they swam away, 5 new dolphins appeared on our port (left side)! This new group included a noticeably young and pale calf who had plenty of energy for some chin slaps onto the water. He was definitely…

Monday 10:30 Rosemarkie bay was the place to be today! Spread out across the bay were at least 20 bottlenose dolphins. It was hard to know where to look, we frequently had dolphins pop up on both sides of the boat at the same time. Once we had spent about 15 minutes in the bay…

Another great week- this time with a few different groups of breaching dolphins! On the Monday morning trip the dolphins made us work for our first sighting of the week. They were hanging out at Navity bank- a spot about 6 miles from our marina! Thankfully, they were on their way in towards Chanonry point…

Well, the week didn’t get off to the best start, we had to cancel both our morning RIB trips on Monday due to the windy weather whipping up some large waves in the Inverness Firth. With much calmer weather on Tuesday, we headed off on the 10:30 trips. With the incoming tide there were lots…

Announcing the 2019 season-opening sailings for Dolphin Spirit and Dolphin Mischief! Dolphin Spirit will take to the waters of the Moray Firth on Monday 1st April. Having been out of the water for a winter refit, she returns to the Moray Firth, ready to give you hours of exciting dolphin watching. She will be joined…

Myhotelbreak has created an article for their hotel guests on Dolphin Spirit which you can read below: What makes a great hotel break in the UK you ask? Well for us it’s staying in a fantastic hotel near to fun and interesting attractions and amenities. Are you thinking of taking a break in Inverness this…

An Otter-view Overall, the 2017 season can be summed up in one word; unpredictable. Whether it was June or September, we could never really tell what we were going to encounter day to day aboard our boats. We had a few surprises, a few frights, and some amazing sightings in-between, all of which will be…

Seasonal Sayonara… Well, this is it the folks; the final update blog for the season. With a week left until the doors close (and our big round-up of the season’s hightlights), it’s time to report what’s been going on in the Moray Firth one last time. Sadly, there hasn’t really been too much to report!…