Strumble (30 Aug 09)

Time: 0600 - 1600
Weather: Rain
Wind: S (F5-6)

Sooty Shearwater - 5
Balearic Shearwater - 2
Storm Petrel - 1
Great Skua - 5
Arctic Skua - 6 (2P, 2D, 2J)
Common Scoter - 26 (1F, 25M)
Sandwich Tern - 3
Comic Tern - 10
Mediterranean Gull - 1 (1st W)
Whimbrel - 1
Redshank - 20
Dunlin -14
Knot - 3
Willow Warbler - 1 (In off and tried to roost on beams inside lookout)
Swift - 1

Sunfish - 1

Record day for sunfish yesterday with 9 in one day. Today another record day for sunfish.......

Sunfish can grow up to 4 metres across in warmer waters but the ones we get off Strumble and the UK tend to be circa 1 metre across.

This individual appeared very close inshore and we watched it dumb-founded. We estimate that this was a fully grown sunfish.....it was huge. The dorsel fin (pictured with buoy for size comparison) was at least as big as a basking shark fin and unlike the thin fins we are used to on "normal" sunfish it was chunky!

This was almost certainly a sunfish - it was moving quite rapidly against the tide and was flapping this fin as it moved in typical sunfish style. You can see from the pictures that it had a large chunk missing from the tip of the fin....try to fill in the missing bit and you can see how big this fish was. (You might think from the pics that this is a shark but it was flapping the fin constantly from horizontal to vertical as it swam - just like sunfish).

At all times we could see the body of the fish (all infront of the fin which helps to prove it was a sunfish).......in a different league to the sunfish we have seen off here in the past. I am not going swimming in the sea anytime soon! (Although I think they eat squid and jellyfish)