DESTINATION ST. KILDA
02
THE SWELL THAT had rocked our night’s passage
had passed and I awoke to a steady, silent boat.
I reached the deck at sunrise, just as the glorious
morning light hit Village Bay on Hirta, St. Kilda’s
largest island. To the north, the imposing cliffs of
Boreray and iconic pillars of Stac Lee and Stac an
Armin rose out of the sea like primeval sentinels
keeping watch over Hirta. As I absorbed this
dramatic panorama of the UK’s most remote
archipelago, I felt a renewed vigour. We had made
it at last.
St. Kilda’s waters are designated a Special
Area of Conservation (SAC) for their rocky reefs
and sea caves hosting a wealth of spectacular
sea life. We were part of a scientific dive team
commissioned by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH)
and led by Heriot-Watt University to undertake
Site Condition Monitoring around both St. Kilda
and North Rona and establish whether features of
SACs could maintain themselves in the future.
We all knew the potential difficulties of
surveying these remote islands: strong winds,
large swells and cave diving. Our survey vessel,
the M/V Halton, was a rugged 21-metre converted
SDOP
48
trawler skippered and owned by Bob Anderson,
an experienced local operator and diver. If anyone
could get us there, Bob could, but the forecast for
the next week didn’t look great as we embarked
from Stromness.
Heading down the dramatic west coast of Hoy
to mainland Scotland, our first day goal was as far
west as possible. In a moderately uncomfortable
swell, weather reports soon showed that
steering straight to St. Kilda was unwise, so we
approached Loch Eriboll as a contingency.
LOCH ERIBOLL
Jutting inland for almost 16 kilometres, Loch
Eriboll is the largest sea loch on the north coast
of Scotland. The rugged coastline supports
numerous, accessible sea caves, many of which
were unexplored providing a perfect opportunity
to apply some survey methods.
Finding a diveable cave was
02 Awaiting divers at
the mouth of a cave in
time-consuming, as we were
Loch Eriboll
dependent on the swell, tide
03 A carpet of mixed
and resulting surge. Even a
anemones
small swell at the wrong tide