Sky TV joined our trip with the RSPB to Grassholm this year to film the gannet rescue as part of Sky’s Ocean Rescue campaign. Photo courtesy of Sky reporter Thomas Moore.
Grassholm’s craggy coastline isn’t the friendliest spot for landing so in all but easy conditions it requires a jet boat. Shaun started the rescue trips to Grassholm on his Ribworker jet boats and we continue them on ours. Fortunately Shearwater is rather good at this sort of thing :-).
Tim started doing these trips to cut free gannets tethered to their nest by rope, line & plastic with Shaun White in the 1980s. He took a video of our crew rescuing gannets back in 2012 (see video here) and another video by headcam of one of the gannets he cut free (see video here) to show why these trips are necessary.
For the last 15 years the RSPB has organised the rescue teams and worked hard to raise awareness of the problems faced by wildlife due to plastic & other pollution. It’s depressing that it’s still necessary but great that people want to help.
You can see the Sky video on their Ocean Rescue site here and read the RSPB blog here.
