> > It was what's called a meatball of fish, a huge round ball of them. The size and shape of the meatball is really obvious from the air. There were hundreds upon hundreds of gulls and gannets diving on them frantically and the water was *boiling* with activity over maybe a hundred square feet.
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> Wow. I don't think I've ever heard of that phenomenon before. Is it just a HUGE number of fish that for some reason decided to get together and be really easy targets for every hungry fish-eater within a 100 mile radius? (Real smart, fishies.) I've seen semi-big schools of fish before but never anything remotely like that. *muses on why fish would do that* Now I'm all curious... :)

I'm not sure why they do it either. (To clarify, I didn't mean the *meatball* was a hundred feet across. It was probably around twenty feet across or less. That estimate referred to the region of activity *around* it from the birds and outlying fish.)
I assume they get together around some source of food, immediately prior to becoming one for everybody else.

> > I was hoping there might be some orca or whales turning up too, but we only saw dolphins. They were common dolphins, which are quite small, with grey and black bodies. Seeing them from above, the way they curve through the water and the incredible speed they travel at, was a wonderful experience.
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> I love dolphins. :) I've never seen wild dolphins, but I *have* seen wild orcas and humpback whales. Not that humpbacks would be coming for fish anyway (and I have no clue whether humpbacks go anywhere near that part of the world).

We get them here but I've never seen one. If I ever do, you'll know about it by the insane overuse of capital letters and exclamation marks in my subject line.

Brunnen-"feels like the only person in the country who's never even seen an orca, which EVERYBODY ELSE apparently sees every day"G