I found her on a website called findafishingboat.com. At the time I was working on big yachts and wanted to get out of that world andspend more time closer to home with my family. When we first visited Port de Sóller on a day trip after moving to Mallorca, I suddenly thought: in this tiny port we couldactually make ourselves visible and build something here.
Not long afterwards we found the boat online. My background is sailing — I love moving with the wind— so it was a big change to take on a motor boat with a completely different heart and soul. But Bonnie Lass started life as a fishing boat, so you’re really sitting on a piece of history. I have photos on board of the first family who owned her in the 1950s, and I’ve even welcomed their grandchildren on board.
The boat itself is surprisingly well known. I can walkinto a bar in Scotland and mention that I have an old wooden fishing boat in the Mediterranean and someone will guess that it’s Bonnie Lass.
Keeping her alive is also a sustainability choice.These boats were originally designed to work commercially for maybe twentyyears. Bonnie Lass is now in her second or third lifetime. Building a new boat requires enormous carbon investment, especially just producing the engine. Maintaining an old vessel keeps both history and materials in circulation.
The design also changes how people interact. On fast boats the engine noise or wind can be so loud that everyone rushes somewhere,stops briefly, and moves on again. On Bonnie Lass the day begins when you step aboard. People move around, talk, connect. The boat slows everything down.
For years we’ve collaborated with organisations like Ondine, nowSave the Med, on different research projects: tagging manta rays, searching for blue sharks, removing ghost nets, monitoring FADs — fish aggregation devices.The challenge is that this kind of work often depends on sporadic funding. I realised that while we’re waiting, we’re missing a lot of opportunities.
Last year, our collaboration hosting the Community Vessel showed how much enthusiasm there was from people who wanted to take part. At the same time a local regulation changed, allowing us to sell individual tickets instead of chartering the whole boat. That’s a game changer. Many people want to do something meaningful at sea but can’t afford to charter a boat for €2,000 a day. We decided to dedicate one week every month of our charter calendar to research expeditions. The boat becomes a platform for citizen science where participants help collect data that is publicly shared.
Our main collaborator is Shark Med, with whom we’ve been monitoring blue sharks on the north coast for several years. Because Bonnie Lass has a hydraulic crane and winch, we can deploy deep-water BRUV systems — baited remote underwater cameras — down to about 1,500 meters.
For example, we’re monitoring squid populations, which are key to understanding peak predators such as sperm whales and deep-water sharks like the six-gilled shark. And this season we will also be working with wildlife videographer Dan Abbott (“Sharkman Dan”) to help document the work and the species we encounter at sea, particularly the fin whale migration inMay. In order to protect marine life, we first need to know that it’s there.
We usually leave around 9 or 10 in the morning and head a few miles offshore to the dramatic drop-off north of Mallorca, where the seabed falls more than a thousand meters. This area is fascinating oceanographically. Atlantic water enters the Mediterranean here, and when it mixes with warmer Med water it creates nutrient flows and upwellings. These currents are constantly shifting, which is why fishermen guard their favourite spots so carefully. Participants help us deploy cameras, collect environmental observations, and log both wildlife sightings and human activity at sea. Recording boat traffic is important because there’s been a huge increase in marine use in recent years, and very little systematic logging.
I like to loosely compare the Balearic Islands to the Galápagos because many pelagic species pass through here or reproduce in these waters. Depending on the season we might see fin whales, which usually migrate past Mallorca in spring. There are also strong tuna populations, and sometimes sperm whales or Risso’s dolphins. In the summer months the food chain can become incredibly active as plankton, tuna larvae, small fish and larger predators converge. Basically, it's a feeding frenzy. And it’s what we'd see in a perfect environment: just the sea boiling. When we are very lucky, we do get to see it sometimes.
Participants essentially become researchers for the day — learning about the ecosystem while helping collect data that can contribute to marine protection efforts, including proposals for a new marine reserve along the Tramuntana coast.
I joke that I’m Pete’s bad marinero because I’m still learning all the knots and such. But I welcome the guests and take care of them throughout the day, and I also design the food experience.
My approach is fresh, seasonal and mostly plant-based. When I came to Mallorca, and discovered the Tramuntana, I was amazed that so many people still grow their own food. It’s the perfect climate for experimenting with lots of different plants.
I have a small herb garden in front of our workshop, and I also grow food together with two local friends in Sóller who are both over sixty. They bring the traditional knowledge and I bring new ideas, and we meet somewhere in the middle. Growing our own food is also one of the best ways to avoid plastic packaging.
I love fermentation and preserving — gathering ingredients in the spring and opening them months later. I bake sourdough bread on board in the charcoal oven, make fresh cheese from goat milk sourced from a farm in the centre of the island, and prepare different plant-based dishes depending on what’s available. Sometimes it’s very spontaneous. We might stop the car because we spotted a bush full of capers or olives. Always seasonal. We make our own vinegar. And recently I made a chili sauce that I started fermenting two years ago, with mango and yellow jalapeños that I grew myself.
I’m also experimenting with sea loving plants. I’ve been trying to grow salicornia, or sea asparagus, on the boat for a while. It’s delicious and full of minerals, though getting the seedlings has been surprisingly difficult.
For us, the food is an essential part of the experience of the day — sharing something seasonal, simple and nourishing while out at sea.
Every expedition offers 10 Places of Soul and 2 Places of Voice. Ten ticketed participants join as active crew, directly funding the expedition while contributing to structured monitoring activities at sea. Two places are reserved for scientists, conservation practitioners or local contributors whose expertise feeds directly into the mission. If you are a researcher, artist, student or someone working on a project related to the sea, please contact us directly.
Each expedition has ten places available, which can be booked directly through the calendar on our website. We also reserve two additional places for researchers, artists, students or anyone working on a project related to the sea. If someone wants to test monitoring technology, contribute to data collection, or develop a research idea, they can contact us directly.
The aim is to keep building a community of people who care about understanding and protecting the Mediterranean. We want to be aa practical bridge between science, participation and the open sea.
https://www.bonnielasscharters.com/expeditions
