Today dawned sunny, but chilly with a cold northerly wind. The visibility was the best we had experienced all week, and from the beautiful island of Oronsay we had clear views over to Jura and Isla. We let the volunteers loose on the island while we tried to fix the computer that had died magnificently the night before while trying to analyse some porpoise sounds. Unfortunately after much head-scratching and delving into the bowels of the computer, we gave the computer up as lost and decided to head for Tobermory to find some rescue discs to fix it with. It was a rather bumpy, breezy but spectacular route up between Mull & Iona, past Staffa & the Treshnish Islands and into Tobs. The volunteers were divided into sea-happy ones - who were happy to search for wee marine beasties all hours with a little gleeful glint in their eye as the waves broke over the bow and splattered them with sea water. The remainder were rather sea-sick and took to their beds, but amazingly when they arose from their beds at the end of trip had big grins plastered on their faces (resilient bunch!). Sadly, despite coming within minutes of a minke whale sighted by one of the whale-watching boats, and a few reports of minkes around Staffa and the Treshnish Islands, the sum total of our sightings was 4 jellyfish and a seal (which was admittedly a rather gorgeous common seal pup basking on the rocks). For any readers of this log who haven’t been on the boat – I would just like to say that it is VERY unusual to have so few sightings over 5 days!!! So all I can think of is that we are going to have a whale and dolphin party at the end of this trip!!!
Anyway, back in Tobs, even the reboot disks haven’t worked in rescuing the computer, but we have managed to find the drivers to run the porpoise equipment from another computer – so hopefully tomorrow will be the start of a marine beastie party in the sea that we can enjoy!

;o) Clare, Science PI
p.s. due to technical difficulties (ahem) no photos for now… photo service will resume shortly