The mosaic of marine habitats that surrounds the Isle of Man creates a home for some of the UK’s most extraordinary wildlife, says
Daniel Graham
e had been out at sea for two or three hours when the captain finally called it a day. “Sorry folks, we’ll have to try again tomorrow.”
The rest of my family looked disappointed, but the incessant roll of the ocean had sent me into a state of nausea some time ago and the skipper’s words were like a sea shanty to my ears.
As we sped back towards the village of Peel on the Isle of Man’s western shoreline, the captain told of the veiled world that lay beneath us: soaring underwater cliffs cleft with deep, dark gullies;
Wvast kelp forests anchored to the seabed with dragon-fist holdfasts; craterous rocky reefs; horse-mussel beds and meadows of lustrous seagrass. And with this, he continued, there is life; conger eels, starfish, lobsters, minke whales, dolphins, octopuses, porpoises and seals all thrive in these fertile waters.
MARINE MARVELS
The boat zipped on beneath wheeling seabirds too distant to identify. By now, the swell had subsided, and amid the calm we spotted the slategrey body of a sunfish bathing on the surface a dozen or so metres from the boat.
Every now and then its shark-like dorsal fin would appear at an angle, water gliding off it like scattered moonstones before dropping lazily back into the waves.
Mola mola are the heaviest bony fish in the world; the largest ever recorded was as tall as a double-decker bus.
All of a sudden, another fin appeared, this time pyramidal and upright. “Basking shark!” the captain called, instantly cutting the engine. We sank into the slow beat of the sea and watched in silence as the shark veered our way. A few seconds later, almost upon the bow, the fin dropped beneath the surface and an enormous body materialised in the shadow of the boat. Mouth agape and gills billowing, it ghosted beneath us with one sweep of its sickle-shaped tail.
These zooplankton-feeding sharks can reach up to 12m in length and weigh over six tonnes. They’re the second largest fish in the world, but to me that day, this unassuming giant felt like the largest thing that had ever lived.
Daniel Graham