Vectis Expeditions completed an expedition with a team of volunteer citizen scientist divers to Loch Criagnish and Jura area at the end of March / beginning of April 2023.

This was an action packed week of adventurous and challenging exploration mixed with some serious citizen science. 

The team piloted the first ever BSAC / Seawilding Underwater Surveyor course.  Techniques learnt on the course were put into practice on a number of site including a native oyster restoration site, a possible historic native oyster reef and also seagrass sites.  It was great to have Seawilding’s science officers Eric and Katherine onboard support for the course and also to be given the opportunity to plant some seagrass seeds on one of their trial rewilding research sites. 

We also had to the opportunity to visit the Kilchoan Estate for a briefing on their native oyster restoration projects provided by Marnik as well as seeing a demonstration of Picsea’s (https://www.picsea.co.uk/) AUV technology that is used to monitor restoration projects.  We also set out to explore a number of sites that Marnik though could have remnant native oyster populations based on findings by shore surveys.

This area of Scotland is not frequented by sports divers and so most of the sites we visited could be considered virgin.  Having MV Clasina as our home and expedition base for the week allowed us to range more freely rather than being constrained to returning to port every night.  We anchored in remote bays and launched inflatables to take us to explore beaches which see more visiting sheep and goats than humans!

We also dived some great sea walls, discovered the skeletal remains of a Minke whale and during surface intervals saw eagles flying around their eerie’s.

Big thanks to Bob, Tash and Neil on Clasina;  Katherine, Eric and Phillip from Seawilding; Marnik at the Kilchoan Estate and Adrian at BSAC HQ and especially all the dive team: Denise, Lisa, Maggie, Louise, Tanya, Liz, Karen, Pete S, Pete A and Ian. 

An epic start of season expedition!