Celebrating what you helped us achieve in 2018

2018 marked our 24th year of operation. Our 2018 Annual Report is out now and celebrates what you have helped us to achieve.

We didn’t do it alone… 85 passionate and inspiring people donated more than 1,300 volunteer days.

We surveyed nearly 8,000km and recorded over 3,000 whales, dolphins, seals and sharks during more than 1,200 sightings events on board Silurian.

Notably, we logged, with great excitement, our very first encounter with long-finned pilot whales and recorded a mystery group of nine killer whales.

We announced our official Gaelic name ‘Urras Mhuc-mara nan Eilean’, which translates literally to English as ‘Whales Trust of the Isles’.

We’ve reached out to over 20,000 people across the west coast of Scotland. We’ve run 45 headland watches, visited 20 schools, held 52 stakeholder meetings, and ran 70 community events and talks, delivered three accredited training courses, and welcomed visitors and local residents alike to our Discovery Centre in Tobermory.

It was a record breaking year for our Whale Track sightings community, with over 800 registered users the platform held over 5,000 sightings of 15 species at 31st Dec 2018 – a staggering public effort.

We compiled 15 years’ of survey effort and sightings from our unique long-term monitoring programme in order to publish the Hebridean Marine Mammal Atlas, part 1: Silurian.

We teamed up with five partner organisations to launch the Scottish Entanglement Alliance to research the causes and impacts of large whale entanglement in our waters.

Our research collaborations resulted in the publication of two peer reviewed papers.

We voice our concerns, provide evidence and offer recommendations across a broad range of issues in 2018 including the environmental impacts of salmon farming and the emerging UK Dolphin and Porpoise Conservation Strategy.

Download the full 2018 Annual Report here.

We would like to wish a warm and heartfelt thank you to the volunteers, donors, members, partners and funders who have supported and contributed to our work in 2018, and towards our vision of healthy Hebridean seas for whales, dolphins, porpoises and people.

Join us today and be part of a community of people dedicated to safeguarding the future of the Hebridean marine environment.