Our Ocean

When a Beluga Whale was sighted in a loch in Scotland, whale and dolphin enthusiasts from around the coast took to the water, headlands, and in Anthony Rigell's case, the sky to see if they could get a glimpse. In this episode, we meet the drone pilot and cetacean spotter who is feeding his sightings into conservation efforts.

Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust - Whale Track app for recording and observing sightings: https://www.hwdt.org/whale-track

The Our Ocean Podcast is brought to you by Seaful - the UK charity dedicated to connecting people to our ocean.

For more information about Seaful, please visit our Website, Instagram or Facebook.

To donate to Seaful, please go to https://seaful.org.uk/donate/

For questions or suggestions, please email us - [email protected]

You can follow the Our Ocean podcast on Instagram - @ouroceanpodcast

You can connect with Our Ocean's host Cal Major through her Website, Instagram or Facebook.

In March, a sperm whale washed up on a beach near the Isle of Skye wrapped up in rope. In this episode, we delve into entanglement of large ocean creatures with Ellie Maclennan of the Scottish Entanglement Alliance. This is a difficult topic, but one with a very simple solution currently being trialled which could massively reduce the incidence of entanglement overnight.

Scottish Entanglement Alliance: https://scottishentanglement.org

Find and contact your MSP (Member of Scottish Parliament): https://www.parliament.scot/msps/current-and-previous-msps

The Our Ocean Podcast is brought to you by Seaful - the UK charity dedicated to connecting people to our ocean.

For more information about Seaful, please visit our Website, Instagram or Facebook.

To donate to Seaful, please go to https://seaful.org.uk/donate/

For questions or suggestions, please email us - [email protected]

You can connect with The Our Ocean Podcast's host Cal Major through her Website, Instagram or Facebook.

In this very unique episode, we head out into the beautiful Sound of Skye on a creel fishing boat with Bally Philp - a fisherman in Northwest Scotland known for his dedication to sustainable fishing practices and marine conservation. He is the chair of the Scottish Creel Fishermen's Federation, and one of the founding members of the Scottish Entanglement Alliance, with a passion for cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) and advancing fishing practices to protect them from harm.

We talk about what sustainability in fishing actually means, advances in technology, and whether or not they can prevent marine mammal entanglement in Scotland's fishing fleet.

Scottish Entanglement Alliance: https://scottishentanglement.org

Our Seas Scotland: https://www.ourseas.scot

The Our Ocean Podcast is brought to you by Seaful - the UK charity dedicated to connecting people to our ocean.

For more information about Seaful, please visit our Website, Instagram or Facebook. To donate to Seaful, please go to https://seaful.org.uk/donate/ 

For questions or suggestions, please email us - [email protected]

You can connect with The Our Ocean Podcast's host Cal Major through her Website, Instagram or Facebook.

What do you imagine when thinking of scuba diving in Scotland? Chris Rickard takes us on an exciting journey underwater and shares the good, the bad and the ugly from thousands of dives around Scotland.

Through decades of diving he has made some amazing and terrible discoveries. He's experienced everything from the smallest molluscs engineering entire seabeds, to the largest apex predators, which inspired him to set up Shark and Skate Scotland, to the hidden destruction befalling the seabed. In this episode, Chris takes us for a deep dive into Scotland's underwater world, and explains why he thinks everyone should experience our native ocean wildlife for themselves...

Shark and Skate Scotland: https://www.facebook.com/sharkandskate.scot/

Macduff Marine Aquarium: https://www.macduff-aquarium.org.uk

Marine Conservation Society's Good Fish Guide: https://www.mcsuk.org/goodfishguide/

Our Seas Scotland: https://www.ourseas.scot

Project Seagrass: https://www.projectseagrass.org

TV Series: Shark with Steve Backshall

The Our Ocean Podcast is brought to you by Seaful - the UK charity dedicated to connecting people to our ocean.

For more information about Seaful, please visit our Website, Instagram or Facebook.

To donate to Seaful, please go to https://seaful.org.uk/donate/

For questions or suggestions, please email us - [email protected]

You can connect with The Our Ocean Podcast's host Cal Major through her Website, Instagram or Facebook.

"Your reasons to continue have to be bigger than your reasons to stop." Ross recounts some truly amazing ocean experiences, and what kept him going on his world-record circumnavigation of the UK in 2018, swimming for up to 12 hours a day for 157 days (spoiler alert, there were some incredible animal encounters!).

His next challenge is difficult to imagine: In his words, it isn't a sprint, it isn't even a marathon - it's a migration. Swimming around Iceland. This time, in the search of eDNA to show us exactly what's living in Iceland's seas...

You can read more about his epic challenge here: https://dryrobe.com/blogs/latest-news/why-ross-edgley-is-swimming-the-entire-coastline-of-iceland 

Thank you so much to dryrobe for supporting the production of this episode!

Ross's YouTube and Instagram

The Our Ocean Podcast is brought to you by Seaful - the UK charity dedicated to connecting people to our ocean.

You can donate to Seaful here: https://seaful.org.uk/donate/

For more information about Seaful, please visit our Website, Instagram or Facebook. For questions or suggestions, please email us - [email protected]

You can connect with The Our Ocean Podcast's host Cal Major through her Website, Instagram or Facebook.

This is about a tiny but mighty creature creating entire underwater ecosystems! We get hands on with Native Scottish Oysters in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland, with Ailsa Mclellan of Seawilding. Ailsa is an amazing marine scientist and ocean campaigner, and explains how Marine Habitat Restoration could be the antidote to the destruction of the seabed, and a boost for people's hopefulness...

This is our second episode with Ailsa, and we're delighted to welcome her back to the podcast today. We head to Ullapool harbour to check our the native Scottish oysters she is nurturing as part of a wider project with Seawilding.

Seawilding (seagrass and native oysters): https://www.seawilding.org

Native Oyster Restoration Alliance: https://noraeurope.eu

Seagrass Spotter: https://seagrassspotter.org

iNaturalist - explore and share natural world observations: https://www.inaturalist.org

The Our Ocean Podcast is brought to you by Seaful - the UK charity dedicated to connecting people to our ocean. For more information about Seaful, please visit our Website, Instagram or Facebook. For questions or suggestions, please email us - [email protected]

You can connect with The Our Ocean Podcast's host Cal Major through her Website, Instagram or Facebook.

Ever wondered what's actually growing on Scotland's seabed? Turns out it's more important than many of us may imagine! And there are big waves being made to protect and restore degraded habitats. Ailsa Mclellan talks us through how and why we need to create better protection for Scotland's seabed, who has the right to have a say in this, and introduces us to a tiny but mighty species which can play a part in doing just that.

Ailsa is a marine scientist and ocean campaigner living in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland. She works for the charity, Seawilding, restoring native oysters to Loch Broom.

In this episode, she discusses the difficulties of campaigning, who actually has the right to a say in how our ocean is managed, and how it feels to be working hands on in positive marine habitat restoration.

Seawilding (seagrass and native oysters): https://www.seawilding.org

Our Seas Scotland: https://www.ourseas.scot

Shore Guides:

The Essential Guide to Beachcombing and the Strandline, and The Essential Guide to Rockpooling, both by Steve Trewhella and Julie Hatcher

Collins Pocket Guide - Sea Shore of Britain and Europe by Peter Hayward, Tony Nelson-Smith and Chris Shields

The Our Ocean Podcast is brought to you by Seaful - the UK charity dedicated to connecting people to our ocean.

For more information about Seaful, please visit our Website, Instagram or Facebook. For questions or suggestions, please email us - [email protected]

You can connect with The Our Ocean Podcast's host Cal Major through her Website, Instagram or Facebook.

Welcome to Our Ocean: the lungs of our blue planet, one ocean which connects us all, and which we all have the right to understand and care about. In this podcast, we'll be delving into what's out of sight in our magnificent ocean, diving deep into the incredible, life-giving ecosystems and their inhabitants, and hearing from the amazing Ocean People standing up for their protection.

We're so delighted your here, and can't wait to go on a journey together as we explore, connect to, and protect Our Ocean.

This podcast is brought to you by the UK charity, Seaful, dedicated to connecting people to our ocean.

To learn more about Seaful, please visit our Website, Instagram or Facebook, or to donate to Seaful, please go here, thank you!

For questions or suggestions, please email us - [email protected]

You can connect with The Our Ocean Podcast's host Cal Major through her Website, Instagram or Facebook.