Guga hunter culture revealed by poet

Every year, late in the summer, villagers from Ness, on the Isle of Lewis, clamber into a small fishing-boat filled with climbing ropes and motor 38 miles north-west towards Sula Sgeir, a dramatic, uninhabited island home to thousands of gannets which spend the summer nesting in guano-covered cliff faces. The hunters' quarry are the guga, young gannet chicks, which salted and boiled, are a pungent and contentious delicacy.

To the men – and it is just men who make the trip – it is a tradition steeped in the ancient and noble culture of one of the British Isles' most staunchly independent communities. Animal rights groups condemn the hunt as a barbaric relic of the past which has no place in modern times, and akin to seal-clubbing. For hundreds of years the villagers have done what they can to keep the guga hunt secret, but the debate has been reignited with a new book which, for the first time, sheds light on the people behind the hunt and why each year they risk life and limb to scale cliffs in the icy-cold Atlantic to collect a dish that is often described as akin to fishy duck.

A new book has gathered tales from the annual guga expedition on the Western Isles.

Donald S Murray's The Guga Hunters is a history of catching young gannets for food on the island of Sulasgeir.

The former English teacher, who now lives on Shetland, also looks at similar hunts for seabirds on the Faroes, Iceland and Orkney.

Mr Murray has also written a pamphlet of poems, called Praising the Guga. The meat is a delicacy on the islands.