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Duncan Murrell - A Whale of a Time

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Duncan Murrell - A Whale of a Time

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  • Danum-Valley-centipede.jpg
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  • Lunga is the largest island in an archipelago of small islands and skerries that stretches roughly 7 kilometres (4.3 m) called the Treshnish Isles. Lunga is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest because of its abundant plant life. Many rare and endangered plants are native to the island. Plants include primrose, birdsfoot trefoil, orchids, sea campion, sea thrift, sea pinks, yellow flags, tormentil and the oyster plant. The Treshnish Isles are also designated as a Special Protection Area due to their importance for breeding seabirds such as storm-petrels, kittiwakes, Manx Shearwaters, guillemots, puffins and fulmars. They are also a marine Special Area of Conservation and grey seals can be found there along with basking sharks, as I was pleased to discover. I particularly enjoyed watching the seabirds nesting on the precipitous cliffs, and a dramatic sea stack called the Harp Rock separated from the island by a narrow passage. It was hypnotic to watch the real masters of flight like the kittiwakes and fulmars launching from their precarious nests and soaring in graceful arcs in front of the cliffs and above the rocks and meadows.<br />
Lunga was populated up until the 19th century, and to the NE of the island, and just around the rocks to the right of this photo can be found the ruins of the village, which was abandoned in 1857. I often used to sit in amongst the ruins looking out across the sea dotted with vegetated skerries towards Mull and the mainland wondering what it must have been like to live there. I camped there for a week, and it was a wonderful place to live during the good weather of the short Scottish summer, but I can imagine how challenging it must have been to eke out a subsistence life there in the past.
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  • In 1888 the island was acquired by Sir George’s father, John Bullough, a cotton machinery manufacturer and self-made millionaire from Lancashire, England. Rum was used by the family as a hunting estate and when John Bullough died in 1891 he was interred on the west of the island, at Harris Bay, in a rock cut mausoleum. <br />
<br />
Legend has it, that a guest of the Bulloughs remarked that the rock cut mausoleum (having mosaic tiling to the interior) was “redolent of a public lavatory in Waterloo Station”.  Sir George, who had been knighted in 1901 and who had set about a programme of improvements on the island which included the building of Kinloch Castle, commissioned a new Grecian inspired family mausoleum (also at Harris Bay).  Upon its completion the original rock cut mausoleum was demolished and the remains of George’s late father were reinterred within the new monument.<br />
The body of John Bullough was joined by his son, Sir George Bullough who died in France in 1939 and that of his wife, Lady Monica who died in 1967 at the age of 98.  Though Sir George and Lady Monica’s daughter, Hermione, is not interred therein her name was inscribed on the side of her mother’s tomb during recent conservation works (completed 2006).<br />
Though the island and castle are now owned by Scottish Natural Heritage the mausoleum remains in hands of the Bullough Trustees.
    Kayaking-West-Coast-Scotland58.jpg
  • This was my first really memorable day kayaking with humpback whales in my Klepper kayak in the early 1980s. It was a beautiful sunny day and the sea was flat calm. There was a pod of humpback whales feeding in the area all afternoon. I managed to capture a lot of good photos on this day with my Olympus OM1 because the conditions were so perfect and the whales remained in the same area for a long time. This was my first photo that I ever saw published in a book on whales. I stumbled across it in a book shop in Juneau, Alaska, which was a great thrill and gave me a lot of encouragement to continue photographing the whales. But the most rewarding encouragement for me was when most of the main conservation organisations, like the WWF, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth started using my whale photos for their Save the Whale campaigns.
    Alaska-humpback-whale-sounding2.jpg
  • The most controversial logging in the Tongass has involved the roadless areas. Southeast Alaska is an extensive landscape, with communities scattered across the archipelago on different islands, isolated from each other and the mainland road system. The road system that exists in the region is in place because of the resource extraction history in the region, primarily established by the Forest Service to enable timber harvest. Once in place, these roads serve to connect local communities and visitors to recreation, hunting, fishing, and subsistence opportunities long into the future. However, installing roads in the vast wilderness areas of the Tongass is also a point of controversy for many in the American public, as reflected in the roadless area conservation movement, which has opposed further road construction on the grounds that it would promote habitat fragmentation, diminish wildlife populations and damage salmon spawning streams; they argue that existing roads are sufficient. <br />
Native Corporation Lands were designated by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA). This Act conveyed approximately 44,000,000 acres (180,000 km2) of Federal land in Alaska to private native corporations which were created under the ANCSA. 632,000 acres (2,560 km2) of those lands were hand-picked old growth areas of the Tongass and are still surrounded by public National Forest land. These lands are now private and under the management of Sealaska, one of the native regional corporations created under the ANCSA. <br />
Transference of public National Forest land to a privately owned corporation removes it from protection by Federal law and allows the owners to use the land in whatever way they see fit without regard to the effects of the use on surrounding lands and ecosystems. This fact has caused much controversy involving the business interests of Native Regional Corporations and the personal interests of local Native and non-Native residents of Southeastern Alaska.
    Alaska-Tongass-National-Forest2.jpg
  • Dramatic declines in harbor seal numbers have been documented in Alaska, including a decline from approximately 11,000 seals to 1,000 seals during 1976-1988 on Tugidak Island near Kodiak – a site previously considered to host one of the largest concentrations of harbor seals in the world. That decline resulted in the listing of Alaskan harbor seals as a species of special concern by the Marine Mammal Commission. A 63% decline in harbor seal numbers also occurred in Prince William Sound during 1984-1997. Although seal numbers in the Kodiak area have been steadily increasing since the early 1990s and seal numbers in PWS began to stabilize and show signs of increase in 2002, both populations remain severely depressed compared to pre-decline population levels. Similarly, a greater than 65% decline in seal numbers has been documented in Glacier Bay since the early 1990s. Seals in Glacier Bay continue to decline at a precipitous rate despite conservation measures in place to control vessel traffic, commercial fishing, and subsistence harvest. The declines and lack of substantial recovery of some harbor seal populations in Alaska contrasts sharply with other parts of the world, where the species has proven to be resilient and capable of fairly rapid recovery from perturbations. There is no evidence that movements of seals between areas can explain these declines; the cause is unknown, but multiple factors are likely involved. Harbor seals appear to have responded severely to changes in carrying capacity and therefore may be particularly sensitive indicators of future change, such as ocean warming.
    Alaska-harbour-seal5.jpg
  • The west coast of Scotland is one of the best places in the world, along with my home region of the SW of England, for seeing basking sharks, the second largest fish in the world. They can grow up to 10m (33ft) long. They are an open water shark, but move closer to shore in summer to feed on the plankton bloom. They are usually solitary, but occasionally gather in aggregations of 100 or more where there are large concentrations of plankton, usually where there are tidal fronts where different water masses meet. They are filter feeders, and in 1 hour they can filter 1.5 million litres (330,000 gallons) of water through their gills. They are highly migratory, but long-distance tracking of individuals only began recently, and it is still unknown whether they migrate between lower and higher latitudes, or between deep and shallow water. Their livers contain a large proportion of oil typical of deepwater sharks, which may indicate that they spend some time in deep water. Very little is known about their breeding. They probably mature late and reproduce slowly, making them particularly vulnerable to overfishing, especially as fisheries catch more females than males. They were once fished commercially on a small scale around Scotland for their huge livers, which contain oils formerly used in various industries, with a peak recorded catch of 250 sharks in 1947. But in response to dwindling numbers the basking shark has been fully protected since 1998. <br />
Because they swim at the surface, these magnificent sharks are easily harmed, either deliberately or accidentally. Currently, potential threats include bycatch in fishing nets, and disturbance or impact by jet-skis, speedboats and other vessels. Globally its conservation status is currently listed as vulnerable.
    Kayaking-West-Coast-Scotland13.jpg
  • From Eigg it was a relatively short paddle to the largest island in the Small Isles, the Isle of Rum. I left quite late as usual, and had to negotiate strong currents and big swells between the islands in the Sound of Rum in diminishing light. I paddled northwest until I reached Loch Scresort on the eastern side of Rum and made my camp along the coast before the main community of Kinloch at the head of the Loch. Rum has an area of 40.4 sq miles and a highest point, Askival, of 812 metres (2,664 ft). This photo was taken from Askival in the highlands in the southern half of the island, looking northwards towards Kinloch to the east, and the sheltered anchorage of Kilmory Bay at the northern end of the island, where there is a good beach and the remains of a village. For much of the 20th century the island became Rhum, a spelling invented by the former owner who did not relish the idea of having the title “Laird of Rum”. Rum has been inhabited since the 8th millennium BC providing some of the earliest known evidence of human occupation in Scotland. The population grew to over 400 by the late 18th century but was cleared of its indigenous population between 1826 and 1828. The island then became a sporting estate and the exotic Kinloch Castle was constructed by the Bulloughs in 1900. Rum was purchased by the Nature Conservancy Council in 1957, and is now an <br />
important study site for ecology research, especially of red deer at Kilmory, and is the site of a successful reintroduction programme for the white-tailed sea eagle. Its economy is entirely dependent on Scottish Natural Heritage, a public body that now manages the island. The 30 or so residents of Rum are all employees of Scottish National Heritage and their families, along with a few researchers and a school teacher, all who live in Kinloch, which has no church or pub, but does have a village hall, small primary school, and a shop and post office, which is manned by volunteers and only opens on an irregular basis
    Kayaking-West-Coast-Scotland50.jpg