An unusual fishy event at sea

Pat and I took advantage of the unexpected sunny weather and headed to the beach, another of our favoured pastimes.  I must admit that I have been lucky this year having had several holidays by the sea, in Sri Lanka and then Kefalonia, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea.

We had sandwiches and a flask of tea and books.  But I spent a bit of time with my camera while Pat did 'The Times' crossword in about forty minutes.  I enjoyed the views down the beach towards West Bay, the harbour for Bridport, and on to Golden Cap the highest point fn the distant cliffs.

Unusually there masses of gulls sitting on the beach as well as flying in specific areas of the foreshore. I have added an 'Extra picture' of that view westwards. It wasn't long before the large number of gulls flew along the beach and gathered a few hundred yards from us in the other direction. Then I started to notice that the fisherman on the shoreline were catching a lot of fish.

I stood up and approached the waves coming closer as the rising tide neared the top of the beach.  Then I saw the patches of thrashing white water just off the beach and started to take some pictures. I now realise that there were massive shoals of tiny fish, called 'fry' when they are baby fish.  The thrashing effect was caused by them being chased by bigger fish until they could go no further inshore and had to leap in the air to escape the jaws of the fish which were mostly mackerel.

Soon after the fry leaped onto the incoming crests of the waves and were washed ashore in huge numbers.  The water's edge became a mass of jumping little silvery fish  all the way along the beach, probably for miles. My blip shows the masses of mackerel leaping out of the water to catch the jumping fry. If you can look closely and maybe use the 'Large' version, you can spot the fry leaping for their lives out of the water. Some of them of course mistook the fishermen's lures for the spry so that they ended up on the beach themselves .

Pat and I both said we had never seen anything like it happening before, except in wildlife documentaries.