Sunday Herald - 16 January 2005

Glory in basking

Surfers are not the only ones enjoying the wild life on Tiree; bird lovers and budding Jacques Cousteaus also have plenty to get excited about

Somewhere on the 11 miles by six miles flat expanse of Tiree are 750 islanders, but where? It’s T-shirt weather, but the beaches are deserted, there’s not a soul on the island’s one hill and the roads are quieter than the stiff Atlantic breeze. Perfect. It’s been a good year for the island. Tourism for 2004 was up 20 per cent on 2003 and it’s not just the windsurfers, pony trekkers, kite surfers and golfers on the four-hour CalMac sailing from Oban. Wildlife watchers get a look in too.
“Tiree’s always been good for corncrakes,” says John Bowler, RSPB Warden for the island, of one of Britain’s rarest birds as he takes me to view visiting waders along Sorobaidh Bay. “The rocks, irises and reeds provide good cover for them. That’s true even when the island’s agriculture was more intensive.” Friendlier farming methods – where farmers harvest crops later – have made a difference. Now you’re more likely to find corncrakes on Tiree than anywhere else in Britain.

With 4000 greylag geese also resident on Tiree in summer and a plethora of seabirds, you’d be forgiven for thinking the place is chockful with twitchers gassing about guillemots and greenshank down the local pub. Alas no. “There’s no hardcore birder element here, like say in Shetland and Orkney,” says Bowler as we head towards a huddle of Oystercatchers pecking along the shoreline.

A wildlife tourism industry has been almost non-existent on Tiree, until now. Skipinnish Sea Tours began operations in July, 2004. They offer three different trips: around the western end of Tiree to see wildlife, south 12 miles to visit Skerryvore Lighthouse and east for a bagpipe music fuelled trip to Staffa. On all of the trips you cannot fail to see wildlife. On our four-hour return jaunt to the uninhabited, volcanic Staffa we are wowed by basking sharks, porpoises and a slew of shags, cormorants and fulmars. Basking sharks, the largest sharks commonly found in British waters, aren’t afraid of the boat. We watch three of the brown leviathans as they gently glide along the bows, circling the boat eerily with their gullets spread wide as they glug down krill. Each shark is well over half the length of the boat. Baskers can grow up to nearly 12m. Skipper Iain Macdonald tells us that visitors on the morning trip got an eyeful of an even more impressive sight – three Orcas.

We reach Staffa, Scotland’s oddest-looking island, with its distinctive hexagonal rocks. Iain’s partner Angus MacPhail, who also plays in numerous Scottish bands and runs the Skipinnish record label, takes us five minutes around the corner to Fingal’s Cave where he cranks up the pipes for a rousing, reverberating rendition of an island standard. With just under an hour on Staffa, there’s enough time to walk the perimeter of the island – where Queen Victoria, Keats and Wordsworth have gone before – and look south to Iona and Mull and north to the Cuillins of Skye.

Angus, who gave up fishing to concentrate on running Skipinnish Sea Tours in summer and his music in winter, tells me that one of Tiree’s more charismatic characters, Splash, the dolphin, is often spotted. “You’re virtually guaranteed a sighting of Splash on that trip. He’s well accustomed to visitors now and he’ll come right up to the boat.” However, the local fishermen are more likely to meet another of Tiree’s sea creatures. Hungry Horace is a seal known for his voracious appetite. “He’d get through a box of mackerel and still ask for more,” says Angus grinning into the sea breeze at the memory of the scoffing seal. “Aye he’s a fat bastard is Hungry Horace.”

It’s not only Hungry Horace who enjoys hogging down the seafood. “You can eat scallops raw and alive straight off the seabed, you know,” Iain Macdonald tells me as we steam past the Dutchman’s Cap heading back to Tiree. Iain also worked as a fisherman for many years, mainly scallop dredging, before turning to crofting and more recently to the boat trips. “There’s no better way to eat seafood. We had some great food on the fishing boat,” he adds.

Tiree isn’t known for its gourmet grub, but the new landlords of the Tiree Scarinish Hotel intend to put the island’s gastronomic charms centre stage. Velvet crabs, brown crabs, lobster and scallops constitute the daily haul, but scarce little lands in Scottish larders. The majority is bound for foreign markets. Most winds up on the swanky set menus of Madrid, Rome and Lisbon. The Scarinish Hotel diverts some of the catch to its tables at the Old Harbour restaurant overlooking the petite seaweed strewn alabaster arc of Scarinish bay.

“We’ve got all this great seafood, lamb and beef on the island. We thought it made sense to promote a Taste of Tiree menu,” says Denise Drummond Mackean, one of three partners running the hotel, who, between them have 100 years of tourism trade experience.

After a packed day filled with the flavour of the sea, there’s only one choice in the dining room – seafood. An extremely large pollack, known locally as lithe, lands on my table encased in a beer batter. The firm, glossy flakes tumble off in chunks. It’s fresh, and there’s plenty of it. As I enjoy the view back out to Staffa from the window, I am assured by the chef that my fish was caught on a fishing line and was still in the Atlantic an hour or so ago. It’s just as well the hotel cornered the day’s catch before Hungry Horace got a sniff of it.

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