{"id":1099,"date":"2011-06-17T10:12:35","date_gmt":"2011-06-17T10:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1099"},"modified":"2011-06-17T10:12:35","modified_gmt":"2011-06-17T10:12:35","slug":"the-passing-of-a-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/the-passing-of-a-legend","title":{"rendered":"The passing of a legend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;re sure that all of the readers of our blog will be saddened to hear of the passing away of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.farne-islands.com\/information\/index.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Billy Shiel<\/a>\u00a0M.B.E., early this morning.\u00a0 Billy was a good friend to NEWT and will be greatly missed.<\/p>\n<p>In recent years, whenever we were in Seahouses with clients or just having a wander on our own, Billy would stop his car if he saw us\u00a0to ask how we were getting on.\u00a0 He&#8217;d always be keen to impart\u00a0up to date\u00a0information about the latest sightings around the islands and our clients always commented afterwards about how welcoming and helpful he was.<\/p>\n<p>Martin\u00a0had some long discussions with Billy when he was carrying out research for the Northeast Cetacean Project.\u00a0 Perhaps the most controversial cetacean off Northumberland, in terms of it&#8217;s status and distribution, is <em><strong>Killer Whale<\/strong><\/em>, or <em><strong>Orca<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Billy\u00a0was an ideal, and very willing, \u00a0interviewee.\u00a0 When he began his answer, when asked if he&#8217;d ever seen a <em><strong>Killer Whale<\/strong><\/em> around the Farnes, with &#8220;Have I got a story to tell you&#8230;&#8221; Martin wondered if this would would be confirmation of the previously unsupported online claims that <em><strong>Killer Whales<\/strong><\/em> prey on <em><strong>Grey Seal <\/strong><\/em>pups around the Farne Islands during the winter.\u00a0 However, the sentence continued with &#8220;&#8230;it was 4.30am, sometime in late June, 1948.&#8221;!<\/p>\n<p>Tourism in Northumberland has lost a genuine legend and our thoughts are with Mrs Shiel and all of her family at this sad time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;re sure that all of the readers of our blog will be saddened to hear of the passing away of Billy Shiel\u00a0M.B.E., early this morning.\u00a0 Billy was a good friend to NEWT and will be greatly missed. In recent years, whenever we were in Seahouses with clients or just having a wander on our own, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,11,105,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-and-friends","category-farnes","category-north-sea","category-northumberland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1099"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1101,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions\/1101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}