Lucky we wore the lucky socks again

The Safari headed for Patch 2 as soon as we were able this morning. The wind was increasing and the sea was chopping up.

There wasn't a lot happening, three individual Gannets moving north in the distance was the best. Only a few dark blobs indicated small flocks of Common Scoters flying around the horizon and half a dozen or so Sandwich Terns mooched about aimlessly just beyond the falling tide.

200 yards to our south at the first shelter MJ was also scoping the waves, we'd no idea how long he'd been there but he was still there when we had to go and start some 'proper' work...he'd be very much in play in a little later.

We got our brew and sat down at the puter to get the day underway. One of the first things we came across was that all our beaches have been passing the Bathing Water Directive tests, excellent news, our water must now be cleaner than at any time in the last 150 or more years! Long may that continue and we're sure it'll improve even more despite the best efforts of all those Sheep grazing the estuary saltmarsh whose tons of doo-doo washes off the marsh on high tides and drifts in the surf to be left on our sands when the tide ebbs; now we come to the crunch, which is more important to the the generic 'us'? High quality premium saltmarsh grazed lamb (and very tasty it is too) for the farmers or bathing water clean enough to keep the EU regulations at bay and before anyone starts calling the EU in this case they are very very right the sea should not be a dumping ground for our waste from whatever source and it should be as clean as is physically possible to get and the bar should be consistently raised every few years, it could be a very difficult balancing act to have both and we're not at all sure how it could be achieved.

Half an hour or so later our mobie rang - it was and excited MJ, well as excited as he ever gets...three Bottlenose Dolphins had just passed him about half a mile out. We grabbed the scope from the desk and still on the phone ran out and over the road to see one dolphin away to the north and now about a mile out - still a good sighting and those lucky socks proved their worth again. Hold your noses...

One of our favourite radio presenters was doing his programme from a nearby hotel, he used to work in a dolphinarium but freely admits the error of his ways, anyway last time he interviewed us was about National Whale and Dolphin Week so we txt the show and rather than speak to him we were invited to the Tower Ballroom to do a quick interview later in the afternoon.
Before then there was the matter of Patch 2 to attend to but it was really quiet out there!
We arrived at the refurbished ballroom which was looking very swish, not that we're all that into architecture.

We did our two minute interview so hopefully lots of people will be looking out for, and importantly reporting and dolphins etc they may see. There's still a lot of incredulity that there should be dolphins off our coast, to which the answer is why shouldn't there be or why hasn't there been in the recent past?
Where to next? We were hoping to put the mothy out tonight but the wind has picked up summat rotten so a change of plan will probably see us at Chat Alley  having a look at the early morning rising tide.
In the meantime let us know what's causing all the excitement in the shallows in your outback.