{"id":326827,"date":"2025-12-20T17:34:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T17:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/326827\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T17:34:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T17:34:10","slug":"rare-sighting-of-orca-groups-last-survivors-off-west-coast-of-scotland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/326827\/","title":{"rendered":"Rare sighting of Orca group&#8217;s last survivors off west coast of Scotland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Meanwhile, the first breeding site for critically endangered flapper skate has been found in Orkney. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The skate can grow up to 2.4m (8ft) long and 2m (6ft) wide. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A total of 95 egg cases were found during survey work in Scapa Flow which was commissioned by Orkney Islands Council. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The discovery has led to an exclusion zone in the southern part of Scapa Flow to protect the nursery site.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Daniel Wise, of Orkney Skate Trust, said: &#8220;This discovery is fantastic news for Orkney and for flapper skate. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Locally known as barndoor skate, this fish has a long history in Orkney.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A flapper skate nursery <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-56346114\" class=\"ssrcss-f6h2dj-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">has previously been found off Skye<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meanwhile, the first breeding site for critically endangered flapper skate has been found in Orkney. The skate can&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-326827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}