Marine Conservation Society: Lancashire area group

The competition is part of the celebration of the silver anniversary of the Lancaster Maritime Museum. Photographs on the COAST theme – from shipwrecks to sandy beaches – are invited. The best entries will be displayed in the Exhibition Gallery.

For further details, including PRIZES, please see the entry form below:

Coast photo competition entry form. (300kB PDF)

by Charlotte Caffrey MSc. FRGS

An exploration of the wildlife, marine life and scenery of Spitzbergen, Greenland and the Antarctic Peninsula.

This is a special event organised by the Preston Society (The Preston Bird watching & Natural History Society) to mark their 3000th. presentation/lecture!

At: 7.30pm on Saturday 28th 27th November, 2010
Location: St. Mary’s Church Hall, Cop Lane, Penwortham, Preston PR1 0SR

Tickets costing £3.50 each available through the Preston Society – full details in the form linked below:

The arctic and antactic – booking form (corrected)

The three categories this year were Above water, underwater and humerous, and the winners, declared by popular vote at the meeting on the 10th of February were:

Above: In the above water category, Greenland sea ice, by Chrissie Ryan.

Above: In the underwater category, Scorpionfish by Lewis Bambury.

Above: In the humerous category, Fish head by Chrissie Ryan.

Report on the MCS walk 30th January: The Ribble Way walk between Longton and Penwortham (Preston) is an interesting route. While the land is flat, we walked on the raised levees, which protect the surrounding land from the river Ribble, and so had excellent views over the river and inland. Wildlife included several large flocks of geese, cormorants (one pictured) and a couple of hares.

Thanks to Hilary for organising a very enjoyable day out!

MCS AGM report. The National AGM came north to Preston this year, just a few days after the long-awaited completion of the Marine and Coastal Access Act. This finally opens up the possibility of statutory marine reserves around the UK, so there was considerable satisaction, though there is still a long way to go to implement effective protection for habitats and species ‘on the ground’.

Something that came from the meeting quite strongly was the feeling that we need to broaden our constituency. We need to be able to show that the state of the seas around us is of concern to more than just a few eco-warriors!

Recently in-store polling work by the Co-Op has shown that you do want to look after marine wildlife. Clearly the state of our seas effects everyone living in an island nation! This collaboration with the Co-Op is now coming together in the ‘Your Sear Your Voice’ campaign. This gives you the opportunity to support the establishment of marine reserves in your area. (See below for further details).

AGM was on 17th November 2009 at the Foster Building, UCLAN.

We had an interesting walk today around Walney, with some great weather and light. Thanks Gordon for organising.

I couldn’t help but notice how much plastic rubbish there was though, hardly a meter without any. I didn’t think I was that old, but I can remember as a child when on a trip to the beach you didn’t see tons of plastic. In fact, like most children, I was a real beachcomber, picking up shells, dead crabs, rocks, bits of wood etc. I would have noticed.

Anyway, for anyone interested, I’ve put some pictures on my web pages here.

It was not the most promising of days – a small group of walkers for the MCS joined over 500 walkers for Galloway’s Society for the Blind in heavy rain at Arnside on Saturday morning (15th August 2009). The forecast was for brighter weather later – so we hoped that would be the worst of it, and looked forward to arriving at a sunny at Kents Bank!

The great column of walkers set off on time, but soon snaked out over a mile. We gathered for a sandwich, and to let everyone catch up, just before walking out onto the sands proper at Far Arnside. Everyone had just about dried out from the earlier rain when we arrived at the Kent’s channel. Due to the numbers we crossed the channel in two waves – this prevents people following too closely after each other, which can result in the sand liquefying under the last people to cross. Those of us in the second wave watched with some trepidation as the waves broke over the waists of some of those crossing. Just as the second wave started to cross, the rain came down again, so we were soaked from the top and the bottom simultaneously! The water lever was deeper than anyone we spoke to could remember on a walk before, and rumour was that there had been some debate between the guides about turning back. In the event we all made it across safely – though soggily!

Finally, the better weather that had been promised arrived, and we were only a little damp by the time we reached Kents Bank, and finished drying in the sun in the Albion’s beer garden on our return to Arnside.

Thanks to everyone who took part in this years Cross Bay walk, all proceeds go to MCS’ Seas Fit For Life campaigns. Thanks also to Cedric Robinson, the Queen’s Guide, and to his very helpful team of assistants on the sand.

Current climate models offer our best guess at the effects of increasing carbon dioxide levels on global temperatures. The current best guess is that 2°C rise will be OK, and we might get away with doubling the geological average for carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere (anthropogenic inputs have so far increased carbon dioxide concentrations by 33%). The problem has been that all of the models are just that – the only experiment is the one we’re living in, and we’d all be happier if we didn’t visit the worst case scenario with this world…

Only there is experimental data to be found in the geological record… Recently scientists investigating oceanic cores have followed an increase of 70% in carbon dioxide concentration that occured in the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum, 55 million years ago. Unfortunately for our current models, this increase in carbon dioxide levels appears was associated with a global average temperature increase of 7°C – twice what our current best guess models are predicting.

More details: Rice University news release (via Science Daily)

The MARINE CONSERVATION SOCIETY runs the biggest annual clean up and beach litter survey in the UK. During the 2008 event 374 beaches all around the UK were cleaned and surveyed, sadly only 12 of all those beaches surveyed were in the North West England Region, (Solway to the Mersey). We would like to see a significant increase in that number in our region, therefore we asking for your help.
Could you and half a dozen friends spare a couple of hours during the weekend 19/20th. September 2009 to clean and complete a simple survey of litter over a short length of your local or favourite beach? In addition to providing valuable information in the battle against marine litter you would also be helping to save & protect our wonderful marine wildlife.

If you can help or would like more information, please contact the following:-

MCS Litter Team. T/phone. 01989567807
E.mail: beachwatch@mcsuk.org
Online. www.mcsuk.org

For local information please contact:- Ron Crosby, Tel. 01282 817776

As the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth, it was very fitting that at least one of our talks this year should feature him, but given the amount of coverage on radio and television already, would the talk bring anything new to light? In the event, by focussing on how his voyage on the Beagle influenced Charles Darwin, Keith Muscott opened a treasure chest of insights into the man and the age that made both the discovery and the dissemination of evolutionary theory possible.

What none of us in the audience had realised at the start of the talk was quite how intellectually challenging the small admiralty survey brigs were in the period following the Napoleonic war. They were crewed by young men with ambition (at peace, there was no other hope for advancement in the navy) and very considerable learning. Navigation at the time was a mathematically demanding occupation, this was a period where mechanical calculators (never mind computers) where unknown, and these vessels produced surveys that remained the standards over large parts of the world until the mid 20th century using nothing more complicated that dead reconning and mechanical chronometers! Where officers on sailing ships were expected to be excellent draftsmen – because there were no cameras, so drawings were the only way of bringing back representations of the far off places and people they visited.

Given this background, we were rather less surprised to find out that most of the officers from the Beagle went on to lives of very considerable distinction…

Barry