On Board Silurian

Silurian is HWDTs research and education vessel.

Most weeks April through October she is either monitoring the waters of the west coast of Scotland for whales, dolphins, and porpoises, or serving as a floating classroom for one of the many Argyll island primary and secondary schools.

Read the log below to find out what Silurian and her crew have been up to each week and all about the whales, dolphins and porpoises they spot!  To find out about the latest marine life sightings spotted elsewhere, click here.

If you would like to send the crew an e-mail with your questions click here.

29th March

11:27 - 29/3/2005

After over 4000 miles at sea during the 2004 season and hoards of children and volunteers aboard, Silurian was well overdo for rest and repairs. Skipper and crew were kept very busy the past couple of months giving Silurian a complete overhaul, preparing her for the 2005 season of marine life monitoring and education work. This involved extensive work both above and below decks such as painting and varnishing, updating the instrumentation and science station, and improving and replacing various other systems on board. Also, safety features on the boat were repaired or upgraded such as strengthened guard rail and new non-slip paint. And finally, after months of having only one of the two loos on board functioning, they both now work!

Now that everything on Silurian is in tip-top shape she will be setting sail for her home harbour of beautiful Tobermory at the beginning of April to begin another busy season on the West Coast of Scotland monitoring the waters for whales, dolphins and porpoises and raising awareness of the importance of conserving the marine environment.

August 15th

11:0 - 9/9/2004

6-15 August – Monitoring trip

Here I was dreaming of long sunny baking days on the deck of the Silurian, watching sharks and whales drift by the boat while I tanned nicely, like last August’s monitoring trip… but it turned out very differently…

Day 1 dawned drizzly and windy (good start), and we headed off to Coll to drop off the education crowd for a festival while the rest of us braved the big waves, drizzle and wind to try to find some life on the seas… the only reason we saw the 3 basking sharks north of Coll is because they happened to be right in front of the boat, minding their own business… mouths wide open filtering out the plankton from the seawater. Unfortunately the joy of seeing the sharks was slightly marred by the feeling of intense seasickness felt by some of the new volunteers.

Fortunately for those prone to seasickness, day 2 took us down the more sheltered waters of the Sound of Mull, to calm seas and perfect porpoise-spotting conditions… and cute white little common seal pups on the rocks off Seil. We moored in Ardfern, but struggled to get off the pontoon the following morning (day 3) with gale force winds blowing hard. However, we did have a fantastic windy and sunny sail down the Sound of Jura that day, and heard lots of porpoises clicking away even if we couldn’t see them in the rough waters. Towards the end of the day as we turned into the Sound of Islay, a blanket of rain and even stronger winds hit us, and we struggled madly to take down the sails and navigate nearly blindly down the Sound as the rain fell in sheets drenching us in seconds… but we eventually found our way through the Sound and nestled away in the stunningly remote and rugged Loch Tarbert on Jura.

On day 4 we woke up to heavy rain, thunder and lightening… dramatic!!! What happened to August sunshine?!!! Despite the continuing rain we did manage to see a very small basking shark with its mother… smallest I’ve ever seen! And saw our one and only Risso’s dolphin of the trip, the prominent dorsal fin clearly visible out of the rain and mist. Although we woke up to beautiful glassy seas, and the mountains reflected in the sea on the morning of day 5, it wasn’t long before the rain started again and the mist closed in. The most we saw all day as we progressed up the Firth of Lorne was the mountains shrouded in mist, and the drips of rain falling off our noses. But we had a giggle anyway singing in the rain and trying a bit of a wet tap dance on deck.

Unusually… day 6 dawned… wet and misty… again… all our waterproofs and clothes were still damp from the previous few days, but the seas were mirror calm, and as the mist lifted slightly we were greeted by the sight of rafts of birds, and lots of feeding activity… always promising for spotting minke whales. We kept our eyes peeled… and before long we had 4 feeding minke whales around us, looming out of the mist. One minke whale came up mouth first out of the water, fish spilling out of its mouth, with the huge white belly of its chin bulging. Another juvenile minke took an interest in us, and came right up to the boat, swimming around us and under us, pointing its beady eye towards us before diving under the boat and coming around again. I’ve never seen a minke so close – it was absolutely amazing. Soon after this encounter we heard that a humpback had been sighted off Skye, so we changed direction to go and investigate, passing close to the columnar rock formations of Staffa and anchoring off Ulva.

We woke up to NO RAIN and sunshine on day 7… yeah!!!! So we set off towards Skye all bedecked with our damp clothes and waterproofs flapping in the wind. A few porpoises were spotted as we made our way up to Mallaig, but it wasn’t long before we spotted the distinctive blow of the humpback. The humpback was pretty easy to find – huge flocks of birds followed its path as it herded fish to the surface to eat, the birds picking off fishes as they came to the surface. We turned off the engine and idled on the surface, and before long the humpback was beside the boat, it’s huge mouth wide open and fish spilling out of the sides as it came to the surface – I got some amazing photographs… and we were all stunned into amazement… WOW! It truly is an amazing sight. It was only a juvenile, so not that big – but still beautiful. We had the hydrophone out (underwater microphone), because humpbacks are the whales that do tend to ‘sing’ a lot (‘whalespeak’ like Dory spoke in ‘Finding Nemo’), but our humpback (‘Carlos’) was too intent on eating to make any sounds. We even went out later that night to listen, but although the sea was teeming with the sounds of porpoises and dolphins clicking as they passed the boat, no humpback song was heard.

The remainder of our trip was spent around Skye, Rum, and Muck, in beautiful sunshine… and greeted by lots of feeding minke whales, lunge feeding and leaping sideways out of the water, their white flippers gleaming in the sunshine. A few huge basking sharks were also seen south of Rum, slowly moving through the sea with their mouths wide open… watched by us as we enjoyed the warmth of the sun on our legs as proper sunny August weather greeted us. What a change to the beginning of the trip! We even managed a few swims in the icy cold water. It was a lovely way to end the trip… and we were all sad to leave at the end.

Clare Embling, researcher at the Sea Mammal Research Unit

July 9th

13:10 - 17/8/2004

The journey up north had taken us intrepid volunteers through the heart of wild Scotland by coach, across the Firth of Lorne by ferry and through the green and foxglove coated hills of Mull by minibus. We arrived in the evening, tired but excited, and had our first view of the harbour town of Tobermory, where every resident seems to live their life on the water and the harbour is crowded with boats of every size and description. Our task was to spend ten days on the motor yacht 'Silurian', surveying dolphins and whales around the isles of the Hebrides, something which we knew absolutely nothing about but were keen to learn!

We had a warm welcome that night, and got to know our crew in the local pub - Martin the Norwegian Skipper, Juliet the Scientist and James the First Mate. Everyone was very friendly and we quickly gelled as a group, before spending our first night on the water. Day one was used mainly for training, and we learned to work the hydrophone (a long cord that is trailed behind the boat to pick up dolphin sonar), enter data on the onboard computer, climb the crow's nest (optional but fun!) and watch for signs of those elusive fins. We also learned some basic sailing skills, and were soon helping to pull the ropes and furl the sails - Martin bravely even let us take the helm a few times! We learned pretty fast, and by day 2 we were ready to start taking data for real.

We spent the first few days sailing down the Sound of Mull and the Firth of Lorne, mooring at a different island every night (such as Jura and Colonsay) and often going ashore to explore before dinner (which we took turns to prepare). The weather started out quite badly, and we struggled to make many sightings at first, though we did spot a few stray porpoises every now and again, but we were having a good time socially so nobody was too bothered and we all held out for better weather later in the week. It arrived on day four, with beautiful clear skies and sunshine that lasted the rest of the trip, and suddenly the wildlife was everywhere! For a couple of hours the boat rang to the shout of 'porpoise!' almost every fifteen minutes, then just when we thought it couldn't get much better came the cry of 'whale!' and there was the Minke. It arced out of the water once, twice, like a gigantic living island, and then was gone as quickly as it came, swimming back down to the deeper waters. We were left stunned up on deck, and then remembered that we were supposed to record the data so went back to action! It was the first time I had ever seen a whale, and a truly magical experience.

From here on in our luck just continued to increase. We frequently saw basking sharks (once about nine or ten of the nine foot monsters all at once) swimming just under the prow of the boat a few metres away, had another Minke whale sighting, once a sunfish (probably the rarest thing we saw) and loads of cool seabirds like puffins, razorbills and the comical guillemots with their clumsy wing action. However, the most memorable sighting was one morning while we were docked at the isle of Tiree. Just as we were about to set sail, a dolphin that had been riding our bow the day before showed up again and seemed to be curious about us, swimming around the boat for quite awhile. Dolphins are such intelligent animals that it was a delight to be so close to one in the wild - this was a day that I will certainly never forget!

When we finally sailed back into Tobermory, everyone was very sad to leave and had had a great time. Personally, I was amazed at how much life there was in the cold waters of the Hebrides, and would recommend the experience to anyone with an interest in marine animals or sailing boats. In fact, I'm tempted to do it all again myself and have a another crack at finding some killer whales!

Geoff Moxon, Marine Life Monitoring Volunteer

June 1

18:00 - 1/6/2004

This week found the education team in the beautiful Hebridean Island of Tiree. The journey to Tiree proved to be fantastic for cetacean sightings with Silurian and her crew finding themselves at one point in a minke whale feeding ground with approximately 10 minke whales sighted in all directions from the boat! Amazing! Then they were escorted into Tiree by a lone bottlenose dolphin. Two of the volunteers for this trip got a RIB ride to Tiree from Tobermory and along the way sighted four common dolphins.
Our first day on Tiree began with a beach clean on beautiful Gott Bay. The weather was sunny and clear for these first days of the trip and we were lucky to spot two porpoises and a seal near the boat that evening. The weather took a turn for the worse on Thursday with high winds and wet weather. The crew worked really hard battling the winds that morning getting Silurian alongside the pier, finally managing it after 3 hours of effort. It was all worth it to get the students from Tiree High on board where they learned all about adaptations to life in the sea. The weather did not improve on Friday when students from Tiree primary came aboard. After a look at some of the local marine life (assortment of crabs, etc . . .) and a tour of the boat, the students were about to get the usual PowerPoint presentation about the whales and dolphins of the Hebrides when we were pleasantly interrupted by a real bottlenose dolphin spotted by a student outside the boat. The hydrophone was taken out and put in the water and headphones put on by the students to listen to dolphin clicks. A sightings card was filled out by the class and the students learned about bottlenose dolphins firsthand. Everyone agreed there was no better way to learn about dolphins than by watching the real thing! After an hour, the students reluctantly went back to school but the dolphin remained in Gott bay until it escorted us out on our way home to Tobermory. It was a truly amazing trip for the education team.

Nicole Freire, Education Officer

June 10

17:31 - 10/6/2004

On the 9th of June, Silurian sailed across to Colonsay to visit the children at Kilchatten Primary. The weather was cold and wet but we arrived in the evening to moor in the bay. Next morning we tied up alongside the pier and soon the children were scrambling down the ladder to the boat. After experiencing the touch-tank, a tour of the boat, listening to underwater sounds and viewing plankton under the microscope we all had lunch on the boat. Later on we climbed back up the ladder to explore the machair and hunt for crabs along the shore. Whilst carrying out an exercise on the sounds around us the piper at the local church started to play...what a magical end to a wonderful day.

Caroline Lathe, Marine Education Officer

May 10

17:52 - 10/5/2004

May’s Monitoring Trip left Tobermory on the 10th, setting off on our observational voyage with ever an ear to the underwater world of cetacean sound. Our team of 4 volunteers proved to be fantastic, dedicated and mighty fun!- Mark from Edinburgh, Kate, and Paul from the South and North of England, and Mara from Germany. They joined HWDT staff: Duncan our new Skipper, Jamie First Mate, Juliet Marine Ranger, and myself (volunteer Minke Whale Project Officer).

Even with all these keen eyes and second-breakfast fuelling, sightings got off to a slow start… We moored at Ardfern boatyard for a civilised first night, and were graced with shy Harbour Porpoise presence on our second day, along the Sound of Jura. This gave all onboard the opportunity to “get their eye in” and recognise our smallest cetacean in British waters with quiet confidence. (- Well, all except Mark, who proved to be our sharpest and LOUDEST spotter!)

After 4 days of porpoise-only action, and various nights spent alongside the Isles of Gigha, Islay and Colonsay (with a FLOCK of Great Northern Divers!), on the 14th observation duties were abandoned due to lumpy seas (-technical term for Sea State 4 and above…) But our high hopes were awesomely rewarded! On the 15th May (a day now blazed into our memories in Black and White!), 1 mile south of Iona we were treated to 6 KILLER WHALES!! (Orca). This proved to be Silurian’s FIRST EVER Orca sighting in British waters!!

Mark had heard “Sounds too big to be dolphins!” on the hydrophone, before Mara spotted them first from her observation post - needless to say we ALL screamed like girls! There were 2 males: one with the classically erect 6 foot dorsal fin, which we believe was “Kinky”; the other male, inventively named “Floppy Fin”, has an apparently stubby dorsal fin which actually curls over his left flank. Thanks to on-going photo-ID work by HWDT and SeaLife Surveys, this animal has been known to traverse Hebridean waters for at least 6 years. Of the 4 female Orcas, one had a distinctive fin nick, which we suspect to be “Nicola”. We hope that these individuals will be confirmed when Top Photographer Paul has HIS photo’s developed… (WHAT a time to be changing film, eh!?… Happens to the best of us!)

These majestic animals remained visible, milling around the boat for over 20 minutes, and all surfaced within 10 meters for a grand finale which left us all weak at the knees. Collectively, this was the first Orca sighting for ALL of us (except our jammy Skipper!) and proved impeccable timing to bless Jamie on his last Monitoring trip as Silurian’s First Mate, after 18 months with HWDT. (So Long, Jamie, and Thanks for All the Fish x)

Even after being thoroughly cetacean-spoilt, the following day we found a Porpoise hot spot off Iona, watched 2 Minke Whales feeding amongst a hurry of Gannets and Gulls off Tiree, spotted THE first Basking Shark of the season, and caught a glimpse of the resident Bottlenose Dolphin as we came in to moor up that evening. (Thus became the catch-phrase of the trip: “Stick a fork in me – I’m done!”)

A windy Sea State 4 around Coll on the 17th still wasn’t enough to disguise another Minke Whale from our now well-honed eyes; spotted Off Effort by Kate (Top Team Player despite developing a mysterious Grotty Hand affliction!) And a plethora of Harbour Porpoises welcomed our lumpy passage home into the Sound of Mull. Another successful trip for Silurian and HWDT’s mission to learn more about the incredible creatures that adorn these Hebridean seas.

Erika, Minke Whale Project Officer

May 24

17:37 - 24/5/2004

Silurian and her crew sailed out to Port Ellen, Islay this week to bring on-board the floating classroom students from Bowmore primary and Islay High. Thanks to the local fishermen, the touch tank (make-shift aquarium) was full of a diversity of marine life such as shore, edible, and velvet crabs, octopus, lobsters, jellyfish, barnacles, scallops, sea urchins, and even a dogfish shark! All on-board enjoyed learning about all these wonderful creatures and the adaptations they have for life in the sea. The students also isolated plankton from water sampled around Port Ellen with the microscopes on-board. Some organisms isolated included: copepods (tiny crustaceans), a sea spider, and krill. Another focus of the visits was cetacean sounds. A physics class from Islay High came on-board to learn about the components of sound and how whales, dolphins, and porpoises utilise different kinds of sounds to feed, navigate and communicate. Besides the wonderful school visits with Bowmore primary and Islay High this trip was also particularly memorable in that it was the final one for our first mate Jamie Speirs. Jamie you will be missed!!!
The weather in Port Ellen was clear and sunny all week until Friday (28th) when Silurian and crew departed Port Ellen for Tobermory. It was a bumpy ride for the first hour or two with more than one of the education team losing their lunch but the rest of the trip back was smooth sailing. The students, teachers, and residents of Port Ellen were all a pleasure to meet and work with and the education team looks forward to returning in the future!

Nicole Freire, Education Officer