Biosecurity risk averted on Skomer after fishing boat runs aground

Shipwrecks of this nature present the highest risk category to the island’s seabird population with the result that a full incursion response was required.

Fortunately no pollution is thought to have been caused, but there were fears that rats could have been aboard the boat and had they jumped ship onto the island they could threaten the population of the internationally-important seabird breeding colony.

“There was no doubt that this was our only option,” commented Lisa Morgan, Head of Islands and Marine. “And we had 48 hours to make it happen.

“Some people will ask why did we bother, and the answer is that the 350,000 pairs of Manx Shearwaters and 39,000 Puffins breed successfully on Skomer each year, because the island is rat-free."

The bait stations being checked (Image: Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales)

For the next five days, Lisa and her team set up a large grid of 'bait stations', installed trail cameras around the island, and established surveillance stations.

The island was also visited by Conservation Detection dog, Jinx, and RSPB handler, Greg, to further assist in tracking down any potential rats that had fled from the wreck.

“The only place in Wales that I knew had the ready-made bait stations we needed in sufficient quantity was Ramsey Island, six miles up St Brides Bay,” explained Lisa.

“They had used the same kit in their rodent eradication project over 20 years ago and I knew they were stored in the barn on the island.

"But by now it was 1pm and we knew we didn’t have a lot of light left so we used the island’s gator and brute force to transport everything we needed to the nearest site to the ship grounding on South plateau.”

The team then worked hard to lay out a grid of bait stations which were 75cm-long plastic pipes on wire legs, to hold the cereal based poison bait blocks securely and keep them out of reach of birds and rabbits.

One station was needed every 50 meters across an area extending in a 1000 meter circle with the location of the boat in the middle.

“Although much of the area falls within the sea, it left the whole of south plateau and Wick Valley to be covered,” continued Lisa.

“But as the stations went out, we still didn’t have the necessary rat poison to make the grid live. We'd been promised delivery before 10am but by 2pm it still hadn’t arrived and we were getting nervous that our plan would fail.”

But as darkness fell, the poison bait arrived and was subsequently deposited around the stations nearest to the coast and the shipwreck site.

“Less than 48 hours in, we had got ourselves to Skomer, set up a grid and got some of it baited - not bad for a first attempt in the middle of winter," added Lisa.

"Thankfully, no rats were detected as a result of the shipwreck and after five long, cold days of monitoring and surveillance, the team was finally able to leave the island confident that Skomer remains rat-free.