The Armadale Shark
Basking Shark (Cetorhinus maximus) Armadale Skye July 08
Heh heh we are in business 
I have twiddled and fumbled and managed to get images uploading in posts. Of course I abandoned the *only tweak one setting at a time* rule and so I'm not quite sure which exact tweak made everything OK, but here we have pictures and that seems to be the most important thing
You may remember that @ took me to Mallaig for a surprise birthday chill out, and so far I have posted only one picture. Well there are loads of pictures but for now I'll settle for three rather special ones...
It was the day after my birthday and our train back to Edinburgh wasn't leaving until 4pm, so we had some time to kill. We decided to do the touristy thing and take the ferry to Skye and back. I realise I am telling stories from our trip in a back-to-front order and that you may not know that we spent part of the previous day on the Cal-Mac Small Isles Ferry. More on that in another post.
The Skye Ferry is bigger and noisier. Unfortunately the tourists haven't figured out that boats move when they are crossing the sea to Skye, and so we were treated to the chorus of car alarms going off every few seconds - and since passengers are not allowed on the car deck whilst the boat is moving disabling the stupid things was impossible. I do actually have pictures of the main offender should anyone expect me to name and shame 
I am still trying to figure out where exactly these numpties think their car is going to get stolen to on a boat.
Anyway, as you can imagine I was delighted to have the trip blighted by Other People's Noise and, after adding to the blueness of the air, we moved off the promenade deck to try and escape the wailing. This was a good thing because as the ferry drew into the dock at Armadale I was looking down into the water at the side of the ship. There were some wee boaties and yachts bobbing about in the clear water and then I saw it.
I, of course, was looking for seals or dolphins, so when I saw the almost clichéd movement of a black fin rising from the water it took me a second to figure out what I was looking at. Then I was squealing and pointing to @ and he of course thought I was a loony bin. But eventually he picked it out too, and we also saw two more further out from the dock.
I knew it was a shark and I guessed it was a Basking Shark (Cetorhinus maximus) because I knew they were present in those waters (I just wasn't expecting to actually see one!). When we dragged ourselves off the ferry and walked up the road a bit we got speaking to a local who confirmed it was a Basking Shark and also that it was very rare to see them so close to the harbour. We could see the shark was now moving around near a wee yacht pier at the other side of the bay and we decided to walk around and see if we could get a closer look.
When we got to the pier the few people who were already there were leaving and we were told we were too late as the shark had moved out to sea. Well we had an hour or so before the ferry came back, so we decided to sit there and see if the shark would come in and see us. The local guy seemed to think we were silly but patience pays some days because soon enough the shark was lazily ambling back towards us scooping up plankton in its cavern of a gob.
Basking Shark (Cetorhinus maximus), Armadale, Skye July 2008
I was so excited when it came within about 25ft of me and I just wanted to get in the water... unfortunately the shoals of jelly fish put me off that idea... but it was just so wonderful to spend some time watching this huge fish (the second largest species of fish in the world) moving around without much of a care. Of course it won't surprise you to know that yes indeed, Basking Sharks are yet another species in trouble 
Basking Shark (Cetorhinus maximus) Armadale Skye July 08
The pictures aren't spectacular (I didn't have time to run off and buy an underwater camera!) but if you click them and look at the full size version you can pick out the white that shows off the gaping mouth. We reckon the shark was around 25ft long.
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Tags: basking shark, mallaig0708, sealife, Trips, Wildlife
Posted on August 25, 2008 in Wildlife.
Hunter and Prey
What an amazing experience! I got a thrill just from looking at the first photo and realizing what it was.
Too bad about the car alarms though. Humans are such foolish animals.