The beautiful miniature dragon-like creature Placida Dentrica which is a sea slug is just a glimpse of the extraordinary creatures in Wester Ross Marine Protected Area which Sea Change has set out to document. It is rare for anyone but divers to see all the fantastic and bizarre life beneath the waves so our aim is to share this with the wider community as well as document the habitats and species within the area whilst monitoring recovery.
In April and June of 2017 Sea Change Wester Ross hosted Seasearch divers to help build habitat information around the Summer Isles. That is when the weather allowed. This was followed up in September by more divers. Inverness Sub Aqua Club divers were supported by a number of other clubs and Owen Paisley of Seasearch West helped coordinate the reporting. Part of this was to follow up on the 2016 exploration of maerl beds as well as check out an interesting anenome found by Andy Jackson in the Sea Change survey dives of 2016. These were discovered in the bay at Tanera near the fish farm cages and photographed beautifully by George Brown in 2017 confirming their identity.
The pdf of the seasearch report can be found here: 2017 Seasearch-SeaChange surveys
Sea Change secured boat support from ISAC and WRASFB and supplied the accommodation. Bill Whyte, Sara Nason and Diyanne Ross crewed the safety boat. Inverness Sub Aqua Club and Colin Wishart, Lynne and Ian MacKay provided shore backup and some excellent food.
April Divers were George Brown, Hilary MacKay and Neil MacInnes from Inverness BSAC, John Rees from Oban SSAC and Owen Paisley, Campbeltown SSAC.
July Divers were Neil MacInnes, Hilary Mackay and Colin Wishart all from Inverness BSAC.
September Divers were Jason Coles, Claire Hallybone, Graham Jackson and Glenn King. The Seasearch report is above.
