Saving wildlife with rubber whales

Life-size rubber dolphins and whales have been used for training new marine medics.

Charity British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) will be able to call on the volunteers to help dolphins, porpoises, whales and seals found injured or stranded along a stretch of the north west Highland coast.

Sunday's training at Ullapool involved props the same size and weight as real animals, and also equipment that can be used to help manoeuvre large sea life back to open water.

The local BDMLR team had dwindled to five active medics due to members retiring or moving away from the area.

It now has 28 newly trained members.

'Major incident'

The group covers more than 150 miles (241km) of coastline from Gairloch in Wester Ross up to Kinlochbervie in Sutherland.

BDMLR medic Noel Hawkins said: “The number of available medics had fallen off during Covid and a call-out to what we thought might be a mass stranding on Skye earlier this year highlighted that we would struggle to deal with a major incident in the region."

The training was funded by Wick-based North Highland Initiative, which was established in 2005 as part of Prince Charles' involvement with Castle of Mey and Caithness and Sutherland areas.