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Christmas Message
MARINElife’s staff and trustees wish all our supporters, surveyors, Wildlife Officers and volunteers a very Merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year. We thank you, and appreciate the time and dedication you have put in over the year, enabling us to continue our conservation work.
All of us here at MARINElife would also like to extend our sincere thanks and wish a Merry Christmas and prosperous 2018 to our commercial ferry and small boat operators for the continued support and dedication given throughout 2017.
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MARINElife's Dolphin Research
On November 28th, our Conservation Science Manager, Rachel Davies, gave an illustrated talk to members of the Devon Wildlife Trust and the Lyme Regis Society on the region's bottlenose and white-beaked dolphins. Her talk focused on two key areas, namely the work done by, and the findings coming from, the photo-ID data gathered by MARINElife on these cetaceans. More on her presentation, as well as links to our published research work, can be found here.
Also, MARINElife has joined a collaborative partnership called the South West Bottlenose Dolphin Consortium with other research groups, with the aim of collating existing evidence, and co-ordinate bottlenose dolphin research in Southwest England. Find out more about our involvement over on our website.
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Don We Now, Our New Apparel
We went into detail in last month’s newsletter about all the ways you can buy Xmas gifts and cards while helping raise donations for our research work, but with just a few shopping days left, here’s a quick recap.
Firstly, we have our own apparel line, full of fun marine-themed prints, to which we've recently added new items, colours and designs! We also have our own gift-certificate for our training days, and as you're no doubt aware by now, we’re partnered with Give as You Live, which means purchases through their site means donations for us.
For Christmas cards, you can make personalised cards through Give as You Live, or if you want to save on paper (or have missed the last post) then DontSendMeACard.com has you covered with its range of e-cards.
Whatever you happen to do, we hope you enjoy the festivities and have a fantastic New Year!
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Training Weekends
Just a reminder that as well as the single-day training days we’ve got scheduled so far (listed below), we’ve also booked accommodation on Lundy for our long weekend of training next summer. If you’d like to learn more about what you can expect, then check out this year’s account of what happened, and if you fancy attending in 2018, then drop us an email.
● Saturday 3rd March 2018 at Liverpool Uni (uni-affiliated students only) ● Saturday 10th March 2018 at Worcester Uni (uni-affiliated students only) ● Saturday 19th May 2018 with Dorset Wildlife Trust at Fine Foundation Marine Centre, Kimmeridge Bay ● Saturday 30th June 2018 with Living Coastal Zoo & Aquarium at Living Coasts, Torquay ● Saturday 28th July 2018 with Cumbria Wildlife Trust at Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Plumgarths, Kendal
See our website for more details.
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Autumn Sightings
Autumn may have thrown some fairly “breezy” weather our way (hurricane anybody?), but our intrepid volunteers still managed to get plenty of ferry-based surveys done. September gave us sightings of rafts of eider ducks, flocks of Manx shearwaters, and several glimpses of newborn seal pups, October had minke and fin whales, common dolphins galore, and a large flock of Brent geese, and November gave us a skein of pink-footed geese.
With winter drawing in, some of our smaller boat routes will be closing for the season, however, our bigger boat/ferry surveys will continue (weather permitting). Meanwhile, you can catch up with what’s been seen over on our sightings pages.
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In the Marine News
Approximately 28 bottlenose dolphins regularly call Cornwall's inshore waters home.
Humpback whales have been seen off Scotland again.
You can tell who a dolphin is, just by looking at its face.
Shags’ increasingly diverse diets linked to warming seas.
It's been a good year for some of Scotland’s seabirds.
Grey and harbour seals are fairing differently in the North Sea.
Citizen scientists help unravel the mystery of declining puffin numbers.
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In Other News: Blue Planet UK
So who’s been watching Blue Planet II? It’s been an amazing series so far, and its close-up on unique, and in some cases never before seen marine life behaviour has been a joy to behold. But while they’ve been filming these fishy shenanigans in crystal-clear blue waters, our own, often somewhat murkier waters, have plenty going on within them.
For instance, the UK has its own seagrass meadows, which are equally important breeding grounds for commercial fish, as well as our two native seahorse species. We too have enigmatic cuttlefish and shark species patrolling our seabed, and our waters are home to the second largest shark species in the world, the basking shark. We also get spidercrab mass moults, with thousands of these weird-looking crustaceans discarding their old carapaces, leaving them to wash up on our beaches. Oh yes, and we often have the odd common dolphin superpod, as well as the occasional leatherback turtle visiting us in the summer to snack on our jellyfish blooms.
Blue Planet II is a truly remarkable and awe-inspiring series, and there will probably be many a future marine biologist created after its run. But it’s also worth remembering that our own waters are chock-full of extraordinary and wonderful wildlife too. So next time you’re on the beach, take a moment to watch the waves, or have a quick nosey in a rockpool, because who knows, your very own episode of Blue Planet could be playing out just beneath the surface.
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