A north-east research group which has been saving local sea life for nearly 20 years are celebrating after raising cash for a new boat.
The Cetacean Research and Rescue Unit (CRRU) last month revealed they had hit a major hurdle in their efforts to raise more than £70,000 for a new vessel to enable them to continue their vital work along Scotland’s coastlines.
But now, thanks to generous members of the public, they reached their target earlier this week.
Director of the CRRU, Kevin Robinson, said he and his team were overjoyed to have secured the new boat which would allow the unit to expand its work.
Mr Robinson said: “This is a much larger boat and is therefore much safer for all of our volunteers and gives us much more room to do the work we want to carry out.
“We’ve been working quite a long way off shore for the last few years, sometimes up to 10 miles off the coast, and with a small vessel you can get stuck and it can become dangerous, whereas this boat has the ability to cope with more adverse weather conditions.
“Call outs are often in the hardest times and the harshest weather conditions so this boat will really make a large difference to the work and rescue operations that we undertake.”
A total of £72,000 has been funded for the new vessel, a scheme that was launched after the group became concerned that their current boats – Ketos and Orca II – were on their last legs after 15 years of tireless graft in the Moray Firth and the North Sea.
Mr Robinson added: “Our other vessels had been operational since the early 2000’s and have both now seen better days so this new boat was really essential to us if we were going to continue our work.
“We’d really like to thank all the readers of the Press and Journal who responded so generously to the call out we made, we were beginning to lose faith that we would ever reach this stage.
“Everyone’s support has been phenomenal and we couldn’t have done it without the help of the community.”
The charity is committed to the welfare, conservation and protection of whales, dolphins and porpoises, with its scientific research work focused mainly on the animals of the Moray Firth where it is based.