It’s time for another monthly round up and my how this month
has flown. I have just been reading the last update and things are still pretty
much the same up here. We are still seeing very good numbers of Minke Whales,
up to 7 on one of the full day Whale watching trips, we also had a spell where
we were seeing the Minke Whales and Basking Sharks very frequently on the 2
hour trip, in fact we had 7 consecutive 2 hour trips that all saw at least one
Minke Whale and usually 2. How lucky we are to live so close to these majestic
creatures.
Until the last week or so the Basking Sharks continued to
show well, just recently the sightings have dropped off a bit, but it seems
that the plankton is just that bit lower in the water, the other possibly
reason for the shift is something that was first brought to my attention by one
of the skippers and he raised an idea that during long periods of bright
sunshine the Shark sightings are usually lower, whether there is any truth to
this we don’t know but this is the only possibly downside to the lovely sunny
weather we’ve had that I can think of.
Talking about Basking Sharks we have had a group of
scientists from the University of Exeter out on one of the local boats. They
were here to carrying out tagging on Basking Sharks. For such large animals not
much is known about the species, for example where do they overwinter and where
do they give birth? So armed with high tech and very expensive tags they set
off very early in the morning from Tobermory and travelled out to Tiree, Gunna
Sound and Hyskeir to deploy the tags. You can follow the tracks of some of the
animals here http://www.wildlifetracking.org/index.shtml?project_id=753
As well as our local Sea Eagle nest there have been good
reports from all across the island, including from Frisa & Skye, these were
the original stars of Mull Eagle watch and springwatch and although the Mull
Eagle watch location had changed for this year, not a lot had been said about
this pair, however just recently the local RSPB officers confirmed that they
had successfully raised a chick, fantastic news for this pair. We have also had
lots of Golden Eagles fledge.
By the time of the next update the season will slowly be
starting to wind down and although it hasn’t been as busy up here as usual we
all feel very lucky to have had such great weather and sightings and will
hopefully welcome many more of you before the season finishes for good.
