Gairloch

Gale force winds and horizontal rain are preventing us from surveying. We briefly glimpsed our first warship this morning but it quietly slipped into the sea fog..

For those of you interested in how Joint Warrior might be having an impact on another species (human!), please check out this news story.

Exercise Joint Warrior 102 is the latest in the multi-country biannual NATO exercises which take place on the west coast of Scotland and which the UK has been leading for decades. NATO ships, submarines and aircraft will conduct Exercise Joint Warrior within the Scottish Exercise Areas from today until 14 October 2010 and it will involve the use of active sonar.

A full assessment of what environmental impacts these large, noisy, ongoing naval exercises could be having on the diverse and productive marine environment of the west coast has never been done.



For the last three years WDCS have been conducting land-based observations of the cetaceans in the Minch from our platform near Gairloch. We are hoping to encourage the Ministry of Defence to conduct a transparent Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) to fully evaluate what effects they might be having on Scottish marine life during their exercises – better late than never (they’ve been operating here for about 60 years so far)!

WDCS has recently produced a UK Marine Protected Areas report. This scientific review is important to our request to the MOD as it identifies some areas around the UK which are cetacean ‘critical habitat’.

Under new Marine Acts, to meet international commitments, the UK and Scottish governments have a duty to create an ecologically coherent network of well managed Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) to deliver nature conservation priorities – including for cetaceans. It will be necessary to identify areas used for important life processes such as feeding, breeding and raising young.

Critical habitat was identified for harbour porpoises, bottlenose dolphins, white-beaked dolphins, Risso's dolphins, common minke whales and short-beaked common dolphins. The review determined that all six of these species, and killer whales too, would benefit from protective measures put in place in the Hebrides on the west coast of Scotland, including the Minch (right here!).



The west coast of Scotland is an amzing place as those of you who have visited (or live here!) will know and it is among the most diverse and special marine habitats in the world.

If the Ministry of Defence were to conduct the transparent EIA that they so desperately need to, this would help them to plan their exercises more effectively. Ultimately this is so that they would not impact the marine environment. Whilst the MOD spends lots of money on research every year, it does not conduct baseline or impact surveys of the areas which it operates in. During Joint Warrior the sailors can not know what species they may come across or the impacts that they may have on them.

Posted on behalf of Kila, WDCS Canine Research Assistant

Well we're all packed up and ready to go ... the idea is to try and get on the road south and hopefully beat the storm that we've been watching coming in from the west all morning! It started with low clouds, then a bit of drizzle and now .... well it's just soggy out there - although the beach is still as much fun as ever, i'll miss our sandy strolls

But it's been a great few weeks and we've seen an a absolute plethora of things ... from porpoises to great skuas, grey geese to otters - on which note i would like to apologise on behalf of the dog who attacked the poor wee otter the other day, i am pretty sure that he/she was not to blame and had their human had them under control the otter would have been left in peace! Instinct can take over (all you have to do is look at the way Harvey has taken to his sheep duties) and it's up to the human to take control!! We've heard the injured otter is in an animal hospital recovering just now and once better will be back in his home habitat before long!



We've also seen a lot of activity on the water when it comes to those men (and women) in uniform and their big grey boats! There have been an unprecedented number of submarines this time too ... which is pretty cool because apparently they live underwater and we don't normally see them! (So they're like the mechanical whales and dolphins then? No?)





You're probably bored of hearing about the weather by now but safe to say we've had all seasons up here in the past few weeks! Glorious sunshine (good excuse for a dip in the sea), gale force winds, hail and snow ... it's been as high as 17 degrees and as low as minus 3 ... you just never know what to expect up here!



And so back to Harvey ... well i'm delighted to say that he has now officially passed his Assistant Training Course and can now consider himself a fully fledged member of the WDCS Canine Research Team! He does however still have a lot to learn but he's got enthusiasm and a keen sense of what needs to be done so i'm fairly confident that come October, when we're back, that he'll be an asset to the team! (I will however be sure my human brings an extra frisbee next time so he doesn't keep nicking mine!)



And so ... thanks for your company over the past few weeks ...we've enjoyed being here and keeping you up to date with what we've been up to ... and remember to put October in your diary ... as we'll be back to keep up the vigil over the Minch! And hopefully we'll see a minke when we come back - although i'm fairly convinced that now the navy folk have left, and now we're leaving, they'll show up in their numbers - and we hope they do ... because then we know they're safe from the whalers harpoon!

No not really, not yet anyway … but it made you look! We’re still watching and waiting for the first minke of the season to turn up and what with Icelandic whaling ships getting ready to set sail any day now we’re even keener than ever to start seeing minkes in Scottish waters, a safe haven from the whalers harpoons. Iceland have given themselves a quota of 200 minke whales for this season … 200 too many … and its heartbreaking to think that some of those 200 may end up including whales that we’ve sighted from our survey site in recent times!

(For more information on the common minke whale and research projects visit our online Species Guide and associated “Species of the Month” blog – where minkes are the flavour of April!)

The weather in this part of the world really does have to be experienced to be believed … 4 seasons in one day is an understatement! From blue skies and sunshine one minute, to watching a storm roll in across the Minch towards us the next. (Bad weather however means that the Icelandic whalers won’t get out whaling so there is always a positive to every negative – and we are secretly delighted to hear the gale warnings in place for the south east coast of Iceland!) But as you’d expect, the storms soon blow themselves out and generally move off to the south, after depositing a hefty amount of rain! We even had hailstones and snow the other day – and yes we did check it wasn’t just volcanic fall-out!!!

One unsung spectacle this far north are the glorious beaches that hug the coast. White sands and green water could lead you believe that you’re not in Scotland after all and are in fact on some far flung tropical beach! Then again … a quick nod to the gloves, hats and scarves brings you back to the correct co-ordinates on the map!





Some sad news to share is that of a recent marine mammal casualty … it wasn’t at the hands of the navy but at the teeth of a dog! The local marine mammal medic (our friend Ian French) was contacted by a concerned local who spotted what turned out to be a 2/3year old male otter who’d been attacked by a dog – poor little thing had a nasty hole in its head and looked as if it would lose the sight in one eye. Ian was taking him off to one of the local wildlife sanctuaries to get the attention he deserved. We’ll keep you updated on the little chaps progress (the otters that is, not Ian’s!) but we’re hoping he’ll make a full recovery and be able to be released back to where he was found – where hopefully the irresponsible dog-owner will no longer be! The very least they could have done is informed someone of their dog’s behaviour and tried to get some help for the otter … makes you wonder where people’s morals disappear to at times!



It would appear that the Joint Warrior exercise is over as all the navy ships have left the area (it’s been busy every day that we’ve been here) and the fishing boats are back out in force. A sense of calm has fallen over the Minch, the waters are running free of warships and submarines and it’s certainly a much quieter place to be!

And so it’s back to our minke vigil over the Minch … on this our penultimate day the conditions couldn’t be better and if there’s anything out there, we’ll see it! (Already got a few nice harbour porpoise sightings down for the day!) Hopefully we’ll also be treated to another outstanding Wester Ross sunset (with a breaching minke in the foreground?) …. You just never know up here, so fingers are crossed!!

The weather couldn’t be more different today than it was this time last week when we were having long days watching and spotting porpoises throughout our survey area. We hadn’t anticipated that we would be so lucky with the good watching weather this early in the season but it’s still disappointing that the wind has returned to scupper our land-based survey now.

So whilst the rough weather means that we have a much reduced chance of spotting porpoises, we’ve had more luck with the much more conspicuous submarines, which have been left, right and centre up and down our survey area for the last few days! The odd warship can still be seen patrolling or moving at high speed as the exercise continues. I’m certainly not envious to be out on the water in these horrible winds!

We have been hoping that the seasonal minke whales would return during our field season and whilst we continue to wait, frustrated with this increasing wind, this optimism remains - thanks to the first minke sightings of the year in Scotland, both to the south of us off Ardnamurchan Point (reported on the HWDT website) and to the east of us in the Moray Firth (WDCS).

We have had some other interesting sightings, if not of cetaceans, including one of the sea eagles that nests in the craggy hills behind our field station. It was a squawking crow and a lot of associated kurfuffle that alerted me to the eagle and several other crows that scattered through the lens of our big eyes.



And whilst the strong winds and the rain prevent us from surveying, we can still enjoy the storms as the rain clouds and the squally showers travel across the Minch, occasionally catching us out as we’re walking the dogs or checking our emails in the garden. It’s looking like gale force winds are coming in for the rest of the week, so all we can do is sit and wait, and get on with our usual office work!