The wildest trip in the UK?

This warm weather is making my feet itch. It feels like it is the middle of summer and I should be loading my car up and heading off to Scotland already for the basking sharks. I have to pinch myself to remind me that is only April...still, it's only a handful of weeks before we will be up that way once again, on the beautiful coast of Mull and her surrounding islands, seeking out our photo-quarry, the mighty basking shark.

This year could see us having possibly the wildest trip known to the uk tourist. We will be camping on some nights to make the most of the location, the atmosphere, the heavy salt air, the clean washed seaweed that will tackle our toes as we land, and to be nearer to those leviathan shadows that haunt the coastline. It will be the anti-live-aboard. The rejection of luxury in exchange for the embrace of raw adventure.
Fade wicked sun, and let me be back in April, where I can imagine such magnificent things are still a while away.

One Shark the Sun can't shame...

The Sun newpaper, yes that international bastion of coherent, believable and upstanding journalism (cough cough) is usually the first paper to print the same old picture of a great white shark with its gaping teeth poking out at the reader every time there is a shark incident, however mild, pretty much anywhere in the world.
If there is a basking shark seen off of Cornwall, they print it, if there is an unfortunate surfer or kiteboarder bitten anywhere on the planet, the sun prints the picture. They would probably loosely connect the picture to a young boy stubbing his toe whilst paddling in a scottish brook; such is the Sun newspaper's childish and unrepentant fascination with great whites and the jaws mentality.

So, the guys at the paper (or are they young boys with runny noses flicking elastic bands at each other?) were probably really dissapointed when a shark 'attack' at Mona Vale beach off the coast of Sydney this week proved not to be by a Great White, but a docile Wobbegong instead.

Wobbegongs are of the order Orectolobiformes or Carpet Sharks. They lie well camouflaged on the seabed, sometimes in very shallow water and catch prey when it swims close to them. They are an ambush predator, usually hunting by night.
It is likely that surfer Paul Welsh stepped on the wobbegong as he and his ten year old son prepared to surf in the area. The guilty species was identified by a tooth that was removed from the surfers leg in hospital.

It is not the first time the sun newspaper has been unable to print their favourite great white photo. A wobbegong attacked a different water user back in 2007. Backpacker Scott Wright received wounds requiring 40 stitches whilst swimming at Bondi beach.

Wobbegongs can grow up to 3 metres in length. Sun reporters have been rumoured to reach a mental age of 12, but only on rare occasions.

image: "oh no..we can't print it...??"

Basking in Sharks

It's not often that you get to realise a dream. After years of wanting, several false starts, cancelled trips and no shows, we've got our act together and with the help of a great contact who put us in touch with dedicated captain, wildlife guardian and seaman James Fairbairn, we've finally found basking sharks. Five days of searching the scottish islands were always going to be a long shot, but it's hard to sum up the dedication and resolve of James who has literally bent over backwards to help us on our task. Nerves were frayed on monday when we arrived at the location on a dull and misty, typically scottish day. Not good weather for plankton who prefer, like people I guess, to stay away from all that and sink down to the depths where it's half a degree warmer. The sharks followed the plankton on their never ending quest for food, and we were left sat peering into a never ending greyness, wiping drips of scotch mist from our noses, with only a gannet, a puffin and several jellyfish to keep us entertained.

Tuesday was even more frustrating when on arrival at the site on a windless calm sea, and glorious baking sunshine, we were greeted with not the slightest sign of fin or tail. We wracked our brains for an idea as to why the sharks had not shown. Perfect text book Basking Shark conditions, in the place recommended as being the most likely place for the sharks to show. Nothing. Nada. We couldn't work out why, except for the idea that maybe a seawitch had cursed us all at birth and we were destined never to set eyes on a basking shark. However, later in the day, we rounded a point and there they were, first one, then a pair, then gradually through the afternoon serveral rose from the depths to see us acheive our goal.

Giant mouths under those big round noses and coal black eyes, nothing can prepare you for the gentleness and apprent vulnerabilty of these giants. One always has a preconception of how a shark will behave when you come across it, and it's easy to look at those cavernous mouths and think that a shark might swallow you whole. There's plenty of room between those rakers. But when they approach you, they are very aware that you are there, sometimes gently veering to avoid us, sometimes closing down that gape and opening it again once passed. Despite the sheer size of them, they give off an air of distinct vulnerabilty and shyness.

Of all our group on board, the one to breath the heaviest sigh of relief was Nuno Sa, Wildlife Wonders of Europe photographer on his mission to cover Scotland's Basking Sharks. He certainly has a knack of being in the right plankton stream, in front of the right shark at the right time.

We all have some material to take home with us, but so far we are still looking for the shot to beat all other shots. Two more days to go and with the weather with us we have a good chance of cracking it. I will post an update at the weekend.