Wee Beasties and Great Beasties

"Minke whale, 7 o'clock!" Binoculars snapped up, passengers swayed to the stern of the Sula Beag. I scanned the waters looking for a fin, or a blow.

Summer whale watching is a tradition my family began when I was very little, and one I've kept as an adult, making an annual pilgrimage to the coast, Newburyport, Gloucester or Provincetown. So when I learned that August was peak season for whale watching in Scotland, and that the Island of Mull was the epicenter, I added Sea Life Survey's Whale watch Explorer to our itinerary.

As we motored out of Mull Sound, Guillemots (Common Murres) and their chicks paddled away, crying to each other. Gannets patrolled the air above, occasionally plunging into the sea for a fish. On 

the cliffs of Ardmore Point, a white-tailed eagle soared. 

A fin broke the surface and a long sleek back followed. "And again, left of the lighthouse!" 

We lingered there by the Cairns of Coll watching three minke whales surface to breathe and feed between occasional deeper dives. As the whales moved on, we motored toward the shore where one of the naturalists had seen a basking shark. This, the world's second largest fish, spends sixteen or more hours a day cruising through the sea with its mouth agape grazing on zooplankton. Their dorsal fins, for two more had joined the first, reminded me of the folded wings of ebony jewel-wing damselflies, swept back and slightly rounded. Behind the dorsal fins, a tail fin occasionally broke the surface giving us the full length of the animal. One came in close enough to the boat that we could see its full body including the white gape of its mouth.

All around us rose the purple islands - to the north the small islands of Rum, Eigg, Muck and Canna, over Rum's shoulder the Cullin of Skye stood craggy against the sky. Mull lay back to the east and the low-lying Coll and Tyree spread southward. Seals lined the rocks that spilled from Coll's northern tip, and arctic terns wheeled overhead. European shags surfaced from the clear water below.

As we started back, the naturalists lowered a plankton net overboard "to see what those sharks are eating". Inside, under a microscope, its image projected onto a large screen, "Professor Plankton" sorted through the sample zooming in on a medusa, the larval form of a jellyfish; copepods, elongate crustaceans with long handlebar antennae; and an arrow-worm. Larval forms of lobster and sea urchins, brittle stars and mollusks, all begin their lives as free-floating "wee-beasties" that feed on algae and in turn provide sustenance for minke whales and basking sharks. 

We came for the great beasties: the whales and puffins, sharks and skuas, but seeing the plankton in all their bizarre and diverse forms, reminded me of what a small portion of the life on our planet we remember to observe. And, too, the astonishing beauty that thrives all around us when we take the time to look.