r1Pped.com

We've had an action-packed weekend, but I am dedicating this post solely to Friday evening as it has to fall into one of the most amazing sights I have ever experienced. We decided to head back down to the caravan at Portrush so that we could go along to the Raft Races the next day, taking the coastal road as I love that route. As usual, we drove along glancing at the sea in the hope of seeing a seal bob it's head up (which up to now I haven't seen along this part of the coast). We noticed a couple of cars stopped at the roadside up ahead with the people standing talking, then a few more had stopped a little further down, again with the people out of their cars, this time on the coastal side of the road, looking out to sea. That was when we spotted the first black tips emerging from the water. My immediate reaction was seal! But to our amazement, we weren't looking at a lone seal swimming up the coast - the whole coastline was alive with fins bobbing up out of the water. Needless to say we pulled over and I leapt out with camera to hand to get some footage of them. I thought it would be a case of getting a few seconds of filming and then they would be gone, but it turned out that this was a very large pod of Dolphins. I estimated anything from 15-30. A passing cyclist informed us that they had swum up the coast to Larne in the afternoon and must have turned to head back out again. Amazingly they were following the coastline very close to the shore. They appeared to be circling at times (I believe the term is funneling to confuse the fish and surround them to make feeding easy) and then they would continue on down the coast. We spent the best part of one and a half hours driving ahead and pulling over to see them swim past again. The real highlight for me was when a youngster leapt clean out of the water. I caught that on video, but unfortunately can only post up stills on here. I did manage to extract some stills from the footage, but they are not as clear as a normal photo. All the same I'd like to share them ...








I've seen so many wildlife programmes showing dolphins, whales and porpoises swimming, but seeing them there in the flesh, just out of touching reach, actually witnessing wild dolphins swimming along our home coast gave an undescribable thrill.
Kxx