From our marine volunteer holiday with basking sharks, whales and dolphins (including orcas) in Scotland (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/scotland)

The last few days have been wonderful despite pessimistic weather forecasting. Plenty of harbour porpoise swimming around the inshore waters including a family of them playing around south of Kerrera island yesterday afternoon. We are currently slapping suncream on as we conduct our last survey en route to Tobermory and the harbour porpoise are out again. It is a shame it all has to come to an end, at least for group 3 tomorrow.

Everybody worked extremely hard and have formed a formidable whale spotting team! This is down to excellent training from Olivia and commitment from staff and team members alike. We had fun too! Our only failed objective was to bring James round to liking Marmite. He may still find we slip a pot of it into is bag for the journey back to the States!

Our survey totals are, 411.1 miles covered, 103 sightings,172 animals, 105 harbour porpoise, 6 minke whales, 21 basking sharks, 7 grey seal, 16 common seal, 220 acoustic readings (219 were harbour porpoise), 263 creels and 41 pieces of litter.

We will all be saying our goodbyes tomorrow morning after a send-off meal in Tobermory tonight. I hope the next team have been keeping up to date and know what to expect! I will send a diary update on Monday with details for the next group as it all starts for us again!

From our marine volunteer holiday with basking sharks, whales and dolphins (including orcas) in Scotland (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/scotland)