Marine Conservation Society: Lancashire area group

One of the other dives over the weekend was a drift through the Creran narrows - there are some super photos taken by Lewis available on his website at:  Loch Creran photos June 2008 (Lewis will be giving us a talk on underwater digital photography later in the year - keep an eye on the diary for more information!)

More information about Loch Creran is available in a new guide published by the Argyll and Bute Council. To quote from their website “(the guide) describes and illustrates the amazing wildlife and natural habitats found in and around Loch Creran, its geological and historical background as well as a description of current commercial and leisure activities.” To find out more and download a copy of the guide: Loch Creran Guide (Thanks to Louise for this info).

Barry

Our last dive weekend to Oban was a combination of good visibility and super dive sites, so thanks again to Gordon for organising this. I think the prize for most abundant squidgies over the weekend has to go to the cnidaria (jellyfish and related), and our encounters with them started on Friday evening, with a night dive on the sea pen bed at Galanach.

On entering the water we were surrounded by a drift of sea goosberies, the bands of cilia along their sides rainbowing in our torch beams. The sea pen bed starts quite sharply at about 20m depth, appearing out of the dark. We have to report that, rather disappointingly, we didn’t see any phosphorescence from the Pennatula phosphorea, but did see a large number of individuals of both this species and Virgularia mirabilis, including small (juvenile?) indiviuduals.

Jo spotted a pogge (Agonus cataphractus) probing the mud beneath the sea pens - which I was pleased to be able to identify immediatly, folowing Gordon’s talk on Roa Island the previous week!

Barry

This article in National Geographic comes with some stunning close up images of nudibranchs and even a video from the photographer. If this isn’t enough to convince people that sea-slugs are nothing like their garden counterparts then I don’t know what is!

The excellent BBC television news reports recently from Midway Island in the Pacific graphicllay outlined the problems and dangers to marine life caused by the massive amounts of plastic in the marine environment. it did however lead some people to believe that that is where all the rubbish in the sea ends up.
It would be very good if the BBC could run a similar series of reports around the coastline of the UK to coincide with the launch of the Beachwatch 2007 report on Thursday the 10th. April 2008.
This would show that unfortunately we have a similar amount of plastic waste in the seas around our shores and on our beaches as anywhere else in the world.
Surveys by volunteers has shown an increase in beach litter of almost 100% since 1994, over 50% of this is made up of plastic.
As well as the hazard caused to marine life and birds by ingestion and entanglement, beach litter costs thousands of pounds each year to clean up, do you want to sit on a dirty beach ?
It can create a major health hazard to people and spoils the beauty of some of our wonderful coasatal locations.
Look out on Thursday 10th April in the press and media when the Marine Conservation Society will launch Beachwatch report 2007, an extremely thought provoking overview of the massive marine
litter problem in our coastal waters.
If you would like to help combat the problem, why not join the Lancashire Area Group of the Marine Conservation Society on a litter survey on Sunday 27th April 2008 at Half Moon Bay, Heysham. Further details of this event are on the diary page of our website.

This year did not promise the best, with a pretty dreadful weather forecast, and driving hail on the journey North. In the event, however, the North wind, while cold, gave us long cloud free periods, with small snow flurries in between, and raised few problems with the diving.

Lochaline offers some excellent, easily accessed, shore dives with a diverse range of habitats and marine life. The wall off the Hotel beach is a favorite with the group, as this offers a white sand beach access to one of the most impressive walls in the UK, dropping almost unbroken from about 15m to 80 or 90m depth.

It is here that we did most of our diving over the Easter break, extending our surveys of previous years towards the mouth of the Loch. This encompassed a new beach, and boulder slope, and a number of additional species have been added to our list for the site, including the sea pen Virgularia mirabilis. The organisms on the wall are all currently getting into gear for the year ahead - top shells and sea slugs are grazing the Tubularia, and laying eggs in great coiled masses. Mermaids purses are to be found on anything that they can cling to!

Our dive to the East of the fish farm at Fiunary was a bit more exposed, which caused a few problems leaving the water, but it offered a rather different habitat - a short boulder slope to 10m or so, followed by a fairly steeply sloping mud bottom. This area usually has a luxuriant kelp forest over the boulder slope, home to a wide range of organisms, including snakelocks anemones.

At this time of the year, however, the kelp has been thinned by the winter storms, but equally (or perhaps more importantly) it cannot keep up with grazing pressure over the winter months, as it gets eaten faster than it can grow! This makes hunting in the base of the kelp forest a lot easier, and Rob managed to find a sea mouse in between the boulders, while more sea pens (again Virgularia) were spotted in deeper water.

The final dive location was at Drimnin - this was by my request as my 200th dive. I have fond memories of Drimnin, with its simple access and sunlit shallows. In the event we were all a bit under-weight for the dive (which maxes out at about 6m), and for once the sun remained hidden behind high clouds, so the dive was a bit of a disappointment. Still, it is different again, an almost flat muddy bottom with occasional boulders in shallow water offering an excellent habitat for a range of weeds, fan worms and hermit crabs. Later in the year the area will have long trailing sea whips (Chorda filum - this plant has a host of other common names!), for the moment and spring arrives, it is dominated by smaller red algae and the green sea lettuce, while the boulders provide safe anchorages for large kelp plants - furbelows and sugar kelp.

The group also fitted in a number of rock-pooling surveys close to our base at the Old Post Office walks, and a number of longer walks, including to the old castle and estate house at Ardtornish.

We took one plankton sample from the beach area. The first blooms of phytoplankton have not really got going yet, so this was a bit sterile, with just a few pennate diatoms. A wider range of diatoms was to be found epiphytic on some of the seaweed samples taken by the rock-poolers.

The full moon of late November shone down on our second sea mouse (Aphrodite aculeata) survey in Loch Fyne. There had been an unusual sighting several years ago, of 8 or 12 sea mice in close proximity and in shallow water, whilst on a weekend dive trip with Preston Sub Aqua Club. Since then we have arranged two expeditions with PSAC and our local MCS group to survey the area and look for any repetitions of this sighting.

Aphrodite is a segmented marine worm, not rare, but in our experience only seen occasionaly as solitary creatures.  To see a cluster like this is certainly unusual, and with limited information available on their life cycle, may be related to spawning activities. The creature is an unusual looking worm, about the size of a mouse, and with ‘mousy’ brown hairs (setae) on it’s back. One of the most unusual features is an array of iridescent hairs around the base of the body. These hairs are being studied with a view to developing high-tec photonic systems.

The surveys so far have only been a partial success, in that we have found sea mice, but not in significant numbers. On the Saturday we suffered severe windchill in the 2 Preston boats that were used, with rain squalls thundering up the Loch. Sunday was much more pleasant starting with flat calm water and patches of sun breaking through the cloud, though later the windchill meant that hats were still needed. One hat left in the loch-side accomodation meant that a diver who usually has more sense, had to protect his head with a borrowed white towel. It created the strange appearance of Mother Theresa cruising up the loch with her diving flock sat around her feet.

On this occasion we found three sea mice,  two of which were in close proximity, but no larger clusters. The question is wether this is significant, or would 14 divers have seen this number on any similar substrate at any time of year? One appealing option for the future is to survey the same area, at a different (warmer) time of year. Certainly the attractive accomodation and the two groups cameraderie make this a likely option for next year.

Gordon.

Back in June we did a cleanup along the shore of the Lune in Lancaster, in conjunction with the Lancaster Maritime Museum, as part of their “Worse Things Happen at Sea” event.

Six of us (and Cassie the dog) spent three hours picking up litter from above the tideline on the Lune bank opposite the Maritime Museum, and over all we picked up 8 bags of rubbish and some items too large to fit in bags.

While we didn’t weigh and classify the rubbish that we collected as we would on one of our quarterly beach cleans, it was obvious that nearly all of it came from people throwing drinks bottles and fast food wrappers away as they walked back along the river from the city centre. This is not surprising when you consider that there are no litter bins along that length (about a mile).

Other very sad things that we found included discarded jewellery boxes, presumably from robberies, some syringes, and a number of children’s toys.

On a positive note, you could see clearly where we had cleaned- it did make a difference!

If you’re interested in coming along on our quarterly beach cleans, do get in touch with us as extra hands are always really handy.