A Curious Cruise

Curiosity Caught the Seal
After a couple of quiet days out on the firth, with little more than a lonely porpoise spotted, it was about time for the gruesome twosome to make their appearances back in the river area. Surely enough, both Kesslet and Charlie were present today, but kept their distance… for the boat and each other! We first spotted Kesslet meandering and hunting on her own, in the riptide of the Kessock Channel. She surfaced a few times then disappeared into dust; we simply could not figure out where she had gone. As we came towards Kilmuir, we also found Charlie, dawdling his way in to the channel as well. He wasn’t interested in the boat at all, and we could only but assume the poor lad was starving and on a fishing mission, since that simply isn’t like him. The pair were not in the river as we returned, nor anywhere to be seen in the Kessock Channel or Inverness Firth on the 12pm trip. We thought they may have left already, but found them eventually at 2pm, where the pair were sitting off Kilmuir. Kesslet was about 100m from the Meikle Mee buoy, whereas Charlie was closer to Alturlie Point. They seemed to be sitting in the tide, surfacing rather relaxed when at the surface. That was until Kesslet made a short breach behind us and a big splash, and Charlie seemed to copy. Neither were spotted after that, so perhaps they were hunting salmon or a ball of mackerel in the central channel of the firth, but with no sightings, we can’t say for sure. Unfortunately that would be the last we would see of them today, but we had some other curious visitors in the meantime!

Otter-ly Adorable!
While the dolphins weren’t around at 12, we did managed to catch glimpses of our other 2 in the “Big 3” category. The otters were spotted by some keen eyed passengers playing around the harbour wall as we left, one diving off the rocks and into the water just behind the red marker. With the size of them, they seemed to be our mother otter’s older cubs, having a romp. We also encountered many curious seals throughout the day, including a harbour and a grey, who both surfaced very close to the boat and stayed there staring at us as we passed by, which gave us all a good giggle. The grey even delighted passengers by squirting water out of his nose at them! With August being so unpredictable, weather-wise and sightings-wise, we can only wonder what tomorrow may bring; why not come aboard and find out with us?