SUMMARY KEYWORDS
kayak, wildlife, seals, climate change, sea, river, north, loch, canoe club, shuttle, sea level rise, salmon, anchorage, effects, erosion, whale
SPEAKERS
Daniel Tulloch, Sally Ward
Daniel Tulloch
So what's your name?
Sally Ward
I'm Sally Ward.
Daniel Tulloch
Sally Ward? And do you live around Brora?
Sally Ward
Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Tulloch
How long have you lived here for?
Sally Ward
About 16 years.
Daniel Tulloch
Really! Okay. Amazing. So I see your, is this a kayak or a canoe?
Sally Ward
This is kayak, yeah.
Daniel Tulloch
So do you go often out in the kayaks?
Sally Ward
Yeah!
Daniel Tulloch
Yeah, and is that around in the rivers? Or do you go out to sea with those?
Sally Ward
Well we do sea kayaking as well, so I've got a separate, sea kayak. This is my river kayak that you can see today.
Daniel Tulloch
Yeah. So the project I'm working on is called Mapping Ocean Change through Art, so what we're trying to look at is any changes to the marine environment, such as, you know, the wildlife, or their habitats, and sort of ripple-down effects to the communities, due to climate change. So I'll just, I'll put the recorder on here, if that's okay? So, when you're out, just when you're out at sea, do you ever see any sort of wildlife or anything? I mean, I'm assuming you must?
Sally Ward
Oh, yes, there's a lot of seals along the coast here. And we go down towards Loch Fleet quite a lot, and there's a big seal, sea haulout there. So that's something that we need to take into account if you're out, not flush the seals from the haulout when they're there at low tide. And well, seals are breeding on the base of the cliff area up on the Caithness cliffs, so that's another area for us to try to avoid. I mean one of the things we don't like seeing is dead cetaceans, and we've seen quite a few decapitated seals...
Daniel Tulloch
Decapitated? How are they decapitated?
Sally Ward
Well, the police said it's wave action...
Daniel Tulloch
Waves...?
Sally Ward
Which we felt a little bit sceptical about.
Daniel Tulloch
Yeah...
Sally Ward
It's how the police came to be involved in the first place, because we were afraid that it was some sort of wildlife crime. It just seemed very odd to have clean cuts. But... (sighs)
Daniel Tulloch
it's quite disturbing.
Sally Ward
Yeah. I mean, hard, yeah, hard to know what is really at the bottom of that, but yeah, we did refer it to the police on that occasion. There were a bunch of them all the way along the shore. It wasn't just us finding them, it was kind of beach walkers that were finding them too.
Daniel Tulloch
Yeah, god that's awful.
Sally Ward
And there was a dead whale along the shore just north of Helmsdale.
Daniel Tulloch
Really?
Sally Ward
I mean, it was like very, very dead. It had been there for a considerable time when we first saw it. So it's interesting to see that sort of thing, but sad.
Daniel Tulloch
Yeah, very sad. Yeah. I wonder why? Is there any sort of reason for the dead whale? Did you do any investigations there?
Sally Ward
Yeah, I mean it was, it was reported by other people already to the marine stranding people. Actually, we were reported being very slow on the uptake. (Both laugh) It had been there for more than a year when we pointed it out! We do beach cleans as well.
Daniel Tulloch
Oh brilliant!
Sally Ward
Every, every year, we have some sort of beach clean. So we, we were actually on our beach clean north of Helmsdale this year when we found the dead whale. But we do kind of coast, very different parts of the coast each year, between Loch Fleet and north of Helmsdale.
Daniel Tulloch
By… you mean the Kayak Club?
Sally Ward
Yeah, the Canoe Club. We're the East Sutherland Canoe Club, that I paddle with.
Daniel Tulloch
Amazing. So in the 16 years that you've been here, have you noticed any changes to the environment that are kind of significant would you say?
Sally Ward
Something's changed about rainfall patterns...
Daniel Tulloch
Rainfall?
Sally Ward
Yeah. It's too dry in winter. And the river has been too low in summer and then when it does rain, it's too much rain all at once. So we're getting floods and droughts in a way that even 16 years ago, we didn't.
Daniel Tulloch
Okay, and do you get many, much salmon, up the river here. Do see any salmon?
Sally Ward
Yeah, you get quite a far bit of salmon.
Daniel Tulloch
You do?
Sally Ward
Yeah. And we, we've got quite a good relationship with Martin Livings, the bailiff (Brora District Salmon Fishery Board), that a couple of us went out to look at salmon spawning sites before Christmas, and that was just really nice!
Daniel Tulloch
Amazing!
Sally Ward
Yeah, how kayaking can be compatible with not going right into the places where the salmon are spawning! There's an amazingly few places that they like to spawn. Which means that we can, we can easily avoid those. We do what we want without interfering with the salmon spawning.
Daniel Tulloch
Wow. Yeah, no, it's really good to be able to, you know, do some sport activities in nature with sort of being, you know, kind of mindful of that nature as well. Do you think the community here do you think they're very sort of mindful of nature? Do you think?
Sally Ward
Och, well it's a bit difficult to ask me, because, I'm not typical of everyone that works here. I work for Nature Scot professionally. And I am the Environment Officer for the Canoe Club. And so a lot of environment-y things go through me. And I mean, of course, I'm always telling people about wildlife. The more you can tell us about things that kind of, the more interested everyone tends to get in them. And for, for kayaking, like the adventure element is really important! But yeah, the wildlife, and the environment element, kind of really adds to that in a very nice way.
Daniel Tulloch
Amazing, yeah. And would you say yourself, are you, do you feel personally concerned about climate change?
Sally Ward
Yeah, I'm really concerned about it. I'm quite glad that I was born when I was!
Daniel Tulloch
Yeah. (both laugh)
Sally Ward
So that, yeah, I'm probably not going to personally observe what happens by the end of the century, whereas you might! (Nervous laughter)
Daniel Tulloch
Yeah, I probably will start seeing. Yeah, I mean, we're already seeing the effects.
Sally Ward
I was just looking at something that, that one of my nephews had posted on Facebook a few days ago, and it said, between 1970 is the first year that I really start remembering things. I remember decimalisation then for example, not just being told about it, I remember it happening. I read on Facebook that the same length of time between 1918 and 1970, as it is between 1970 and now, and I thought, 'Crikey. I actually remember something was like, tremendous change in the world!' and I remember in 1970, my grandmother talking about the end of the First World War, which she remembered because she was a teenager then. It was unimaginable a long time ago!
I was just really surprised by how, yeah, within two generations of memory the world has turned upside down in terms of, yeah kind of social-political things, and unfortunately, the next two generations probably going to be turned upside down with climate chaos. Which will lead to social and political turmoil.
I mean, a lot of things that are wrong in the world with conflict between people are driven by climate change now.
Daniel Tulloch
Completely, yeah.
Sally Ward
I mean, all these poor migrants trying to come from Africa to find a way to live, are having to come north because you can't live in Africa, because it's gone too dry there.
Daniel Tulloch
Yeah, they can't grow anything.
Sally Ward
And we're getting too dry, too cold, too hot! I mean my vegetable garden isn't as productive now, as it was when I first started it. And the weather, the weather is too cold in April. And seeds don't get going early enough. And then if you bring them all indoors, it was too much of a shock for them to put them out. And it wasn't like that originally, when I started planting. I mean it's kind of right on the edge for... Well, we're not self-sufficient in vegetables, but I try to be self-sufficient in carrots and potatoes.
Daniel Tulloch
That's good! Yeah, I mean, that's a start isn't it?
Sally Ward
But getting those off to a good start is really, really important when you're growing stuff so far north, so I have noticed a difference. And I've also got a boat over on the west coast and I've been going to Torridon for more than 50 years now. And I can see for myself the sea level rise at the anchorage in Torridon, cause I know exactly where the grass used to come to.
And now the sea has gone up and eroded it in a way that it's gone, yeah, kind of about two inches vertically and back about two feet. And I see seaweed on the grass now in places where there was never seaweed on the grass for decades and decades in the area that I was extremely familiar with. And this is a sheltered place next to the anchorage. I was really surprised that yeah, I can see from my own recollections! Climate change, sea level rise, coastal erosion. I mean, obviously on a micro scale.
Daniel Tulloch
Yeah. But if you're thinking if you're seeing it there, then imagine you know, it's, it must be happening all over the world.
Sally Ward
Yes!
Daniel Tulloch
The same, you know it's just-
Sally Ward
Yes, the sea, the sea hasn't just gone up and got rougher in Torridon! In a sheltered place!
Daniel Tulloch
I mean, if you look at some places in the world, like, is it Mauritius? Those islands, and you know a lot of these islands -
Sally Ward
Yeah, a lot of these Pacific Islands are in big trouble.
Daniel Tulloch
Yeah! Big trouble in Bangladesh obviously, it is a really big problem there. But-
Sally Ward
Yeah, so these are, these are huge challenges. Ha! I mean we were just joking around when we took the kayaks out of the river down there, and my two colleagues offered to carry the kayak up to the bank for me rather than me driving down for it.
Daniel Tulloch
Yeah. Really?
Sally Ward
And I said, 'Oh, yes, we'll save the world's resources! I don't have to start the engine! - An extra time and drive all the way down there just to get the kayak. You two strong guys can go and carry it up for me!'
Daniel Tulloch
Oh that's good!
Sally Ward
They've got the second car here for the shuttle. So we drove in one vehicle to the lock. And had two vehicles here, and then second vehicle goes with the driver back to the loch so that, yeah, we're, yeah I can just, if I wasn't talking to you, I could just go straight out. Yeah, no one's hanging around. Sometimes in summer we do the shuttle with cycling, but we thought it might be sleeting by the time was got out of the river today.