Marine Conservation Society: Lancashire area group

We arrived at Glen Luce through torrential rain on the Friday night, at start of the August Bank Holiday. Saturday, thankfully, was a stark contrast, with just a couple of showers, otherwise warm and sunny. The strong winds and heavy rain of the previous day had, however, done its damage to underwater conditions around the coast. The most sheltered spot, at Lady Bay, looked promising, with no swell, blue skies and water – but rubbish underwater visibility. At least we could eat our sandwiches and dry off our kit in the sun afterwards! The morning was followed with excursions to Stranraer and Port Logan, there being little prospect of any diving that day…

The weather got wetter overnight, and Sunday was quite grey, with light drizzle in the morning. We first tried to get access to Drumbreddan Bay, but the track (and public footpath) were submerged under a deep spill of slurry, which looked to have been festering for some time. Consequently we made our way down to Ardwell Bay. Here there was a deep swell, which would have made diving quite difficult in shallow water close to the rocks. We decided to chance snorkelling, which was a very enjoyable experience, the movement of the weed in the swell makes you appreciate some of the mechanical stresses seaweed (and shore organisms in general) have to survive. While we were in very shallow water, we did spot some mearl (unexpected in less than 2m depth), wrasse, and plenty of weed!

After the snorkel the weather closed in, stopping any further hopes of diving that day, so we made our way down to the tea house on the Mull of Galloway. Here the weather was quite atmospheric, with, for once, visibility above the water challenging what we had experienced below it!

Still, despite the weather (which again was very soggy for our drive home on Monday), we all enjoyed the weekend – good company, good food, and good accommodation (thanks to White Cairn Caravan Site at Glen Luce). Thanks to Jo for organising the trip!

Above right: Photo montage from top to bottom: Lady Bay on Saturday – sheltered but poor (underwater) visibility. Corsewall Point was too exposed to dive, with large waves and a deep swell. On Sunday the vis had cleared to >1m, so we were able to snorkel at Ardwell Bay (photo of Fucus sp.), though the swell was still strong. By early afternoon the cloud had closed in, and visibility (above water) was pretty poor (photo of the Mull of Galloway lighthouse)…

Barry

We were enticed into the calm, sheltered blue waters of Lady Bay (Mull of Galloway) on Saturday (29th September 2009), only to find that conditions were pretty much un-diveable, with lots of suspended silt giving a visibility of about 10cm! You could see which way was up, and that was about it…

Having got wet, however, I decided to try and get some samples for microscopy, and got a rather nice sample of sea mat on a laminarian. Sea mat is an ectoproct, a colonial animal that is commonly found forming white reflective sheets on kelp fronds, look closer and you’ll see that the sheet is formed of lots of tiny cell-like structures, but that is about as much information as you’ll get with the naked eye.

Under the microscope, however, we can see that each cell is an individual animal – the colony being formed by numerous clones living tightly packed together. When feeding, each animal extends a cone of tentacles, which are quickly retracted if it is disturbed.

Above right: Two micrographs of Mambranipora membranacea (L): Top showing extended feeding arms of the lophophore. Bottom, showing the growing edge of the animal, on Laminaria sp.

Barry