Menoturals; Aquatic Amazingness

After leaving Alness, I went first to Culloden, but I am skipping that report today because I want to be more Nature Friday-appropriate. So the next stop was...

Way back, near the beginning of this blog, I shared my experience gaining my SCUBA certificate. I haven't tank-dived since, but I have snorkelled and 'free-dived' (shallowly) to view corals, fish, and sea vegetation. Australia lends itself to that. It struck me with force recently to realise that I had not been immersed in salt water in nearly fifteen years. My time in India was focused elsewhere, and repatriation to this Bonny Land had other things happening. As well as frigid water.

How to get my underwater fixes, then? Well, aquariums, of course! More specifically, the Macduff Aquarium. You may recall I visited there in March and had a whale of a time (no pun), even 'adopting' a Conger Eel...

Yes, I am part of the Macduff Shoal. I couldn't be up north and so near without paying another visit. 

Timing is everything. As it happened, there was a midsummer evening event advertised that I really wanted to participate in, and it fell in just the right place between being up north and then (though this hadn't been arranged before my booking) a mad dash to the Borders. For a wobbly moment, I thought I might have to skip the aquarium, but it was too appealing and needed my fix. Numbers were limited to 25 people, so it was a really personal experience.

The purpose of the evening was to get an inside and behind-the-scenes look at how the aquarium operates. That, and to have some proper personal time with the fishies! That's Hannah cleaning the glass on the main tank. It's a central, circular pool filled from the Moray Firth. The water is drawn in at high tide and flushed through several different tanks to ensure no pollutants (including microplastics) are brought in. Hannah showed us around all the techy bits. Like an iceberg, there is almost more hidden than is seen!

With only one or two exceptions, all the livestock in the aquarium comes directly from the Moray Firth. The whole purpose of the Macduff Aquarium is to showcase the beauty and variety in Scottish waters—every bit as wonderful as any tropical reef! When new creatures are brought in, they must first go into quarantine. Generally speaking, replenishment of stock is done by harvesting young of any species. This ensures a decent life span and minimises any possible traumatic effects due to changes in their environment. Also, this is only done when a species is entirely new to the collection or, for some reason, existing stock has failed to breed sufficiently to maintain an exhibit. 

We got to see the 'kitchen' and the various menu offerings for each different tank. Then... THEN! We got to participate in the feeding of the sharks!!! The lighting was in night-time mode, so it was all a bit of a "red light district". Chris, the Aquatic Director, handed us litter-picker sticks with bits of food to grip and dangle before the faces of the different fish. There were Thorn-tailed Skate, Lesser Spotted Dogfish, and Bull Huss. The latter two are more correctly called Catsharks. All of these fish were also willing to take food directly from the hand - if one was willing to give that a go... Oh, this was a joyful thing! In the video snippets, you will also see a Turbot muscling in on the act - not a shark, but excess stock to the main tank. Chris said that sticking noses into the air was thought to be something akin to us yawning - a physiological action to boost oxygenation. It was cute to watch and did lend itself very well to the hand-feeding part. The Bull Huss are the bigger, darker sharks.

After that excitement, Chris gave a half-hour presentation on some of his underwater photography from dives, all within two miles of the aquarium. He is a specialist in nudibranchs, aka sea slugs. There are over a hundred species in the sea around the UK (you can see 57 of them on this site...) A lot more interesting than you might imagine. He also emphasised that a lot of the time, visibility is like pea soup. Something that brought back memories of that Daydream Island dive........🙃

Then it was all over. It was out to The Grey to top up his battery, ready for the impending mad dash... That's another post.

And this is not all in terms of posting from the aquarium. Next week is Final Friday, yet again... I am saving some fishy pictures and some interesting info on names for that. (Oh, and tomorrow, another wee video...)