A diving expedition is under way to uncover the secrets of giant horse mussels on Scotland's seabed.
Researchers from Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt university have headed to Scapa Flow, Orkney to examine the habitat of the mussels which can grow to 25cm-long, equivalent to a size nine shoe, and can live for up to 50 years.
The team hopes to conduct 100 dives over the next two weeks.
William Sanderson, from the university's school of life sciences, said: "Due to their longevity, they're not really edible. They are rumoured to be quite tough and probably have quite a lot of muck in them, but their age is also a fantastic way for us to discover clues about the environmental quality of their habitat and what we can do to protect these cold water reefs from damage."
It is hoped that information gathered on the expedition will help scientists develop ways to monitor the environmental quality of the mussel beds. They will look at ways to restore damaged beds and examine how the creatures give shelter and nutrition to other sea life.
Wildlife and underwater photographer and writer Richard Shucksmith is accompanying the team, documenting the dive and life onboard the research vessel Sunrise, with daily posts appearing on the group's Facebook page.
The university previously explored the largest horse mussel reef found to date in Wick, said to cover the same area as 380 football pitches, and a reef in Wales which contained almost 300 species and 5,000 individual animals in an area the size of two sides of an A4 sheet of paper.
Dr Sanderson said: "We're really looking forward to documenting these biodiversity hotspots off the coast of Orkney where tens of billions of organisms can be found living on just one horse mussel reef. The giant horse mussels are fascinating creatures, though you would not necessarily serve them up as a gourmet treat."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article