Location; South side of Ulva
Distance travelled; 49 miles
Weather; Fine and sunny, little bit of wind

We left Bunessan this morning about 8.30am and headed around the northern shore of Iona and out westwards. The conditions were too poor to survey offshore so we turned about and headed up Loch Scridain. Soon after we spotted our first Ocean Sun Fish, it was a baby one and floated quite closely past the ship, it almost appeared to be waving at us with its fin slapping from side to side!

We then carried on into Loch Scridain and continued surveying, in between making cups of tea and bacon sarnies (or cheese sarnies for the veggies!). On leaving the loch we continued on to Staffa and slowly sailed past the island so we could have a look at geographical features of the island and although not a very big island, today it seemed to have a lot of visitors walking about on it!

We then encountered 2 Harbour Porpoises who swam past the ship continuing on their journey in the Atlantic Sea. Soon after we were excited to spot a juvenile Basking Shark, but we needn’t have worried as soon after about 6 more showed up, ranging from more juveniles to fully grown adults (which were huge!)

We continued around the Treshnish Iles and made our way to Ulva where we docked for the night. After dinner we got in the dinghy and went out to a small deserted island which we explored for a while. We then went over to the mainland and explored some ruins on South side of the island before heading back to the Silurian for a glass of wine and a good night’s sleep.

Log by Sharon