Location: Kyle of Lochalsh

Position: 57 16.7 N, 05 43.1 W

Distance covered: 49.3 nm

We left Kyle of Lochalsh this morning and headed out underneath the Skye Bridge into the Inner Sound, which separates the mainland from the Isle of Raasay.  We were greeted by calm seas and sunny skies.  We ventured north up the sound and were greeted by the sight porpoises and seals and of many, MANY creels.  The next few hours were spent calling out the locations of these creels as shouts and cries (made with varying levels of enthusiasm) of “CREEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLL” rung out.  Cormac headed up the crows nest to take advantage of the calm conditions and the relative silence above the heads of the hard-working, creel-spotting volunteers.  He wasn’t up there long before a couple more harbour porpoises and seals were spotted and then sighted a large minke whale looming off in the distance in amongst the creel-buoys.  He called out to alert the crew, but the whale, though large and over 2 km away, was clearly spooked by the volume of ‘creel-cries’ coming from Silurian and decided to dive and not come back again.  Cormac’s credibility as a scientist and spotter were called into question, but soon enough he spotted another minke frolicking off in the distance and this time other crew-members made the sighting too to verify his manic observations.  Sadly that was the last large cetacean sighting of the day. 

We headed up to the north end of Rona before heading east then south, returning to Kyle of Lochalsh, not before another 300 creels were spotted and their positions logged.  We finished the evening with a fantastic chicken curry prepared by Steve and a walk off to the Skye Bridge to enjoy the sunset.  Tomorrow we head south and hope more sightings and less creels await us…

Cormac

Science Officer.

# posted by HWDT @ 10:02 AM