Seasearch News

Updated 18th January 2012

New Local Coordinators for Seasearch

We have a new coordinator for North East England. She is Paula Lightfoot who has been active in Seasearch, is a Seasearch Surveyor, Tutor and already enters the North East and Scottish data into Marine Recorder. She will be organising a full range of courses and survey dives on behalf of MCS and the programme will also include dives organised by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, potential tutor Nic Faulks and other Seasearch volunteers. Paula is based in York and can be contacted at: p.lightfoot@btinternet.com

Paula takes over from Carrie Pillow who has been the North East coordinator for a number of years. Thanks to her for all her efforts on Seasearch's behalf.

Changes are also taking place in Cornwall, Dorset and Sussex where the existing coordinators are moving, or have moved, on to other jobs. All are going to continue to be actively involved in Seasearch courses and surveys. Thanks to Angie Gall, Kathryn Dawson and Chris Williams for all their efforts.

Names and contacts for all of the Seasearch Regional/Local Coordinators can be found on the Nationwide page of this site.

Seasearch Surveys in 2012

The first tranche of survey dives organised for 2012 are now listed on the Diving page of the site. In England many of them will concentrate on gathering further evidence to support the proposed Marine Conservation Zones. They include sites in Devon, Dorset, Sussex and Yorkshire so far and there will be more to come. We hope that when the proposed sites in Wales are published we will be able to include them in our programme too. In Scotland the dives so far are concentrating on filling gaps in current Seasearch coverage and include Foula (Shetland), the far North-West and Barra.

Many more survey dates will be added as they are received. Early booking is always advisable as many of them fill up very fast indeed.

Last call for Seasearch records for 2011 to go in the database

With the 2011 diving season rapidly fading from memory we are now well into the data entry process and to do that successfully we need to have all the data that has been collected. If you have forms which you have not yet sent of to your local coordinator or to Seasearch at MCS please do so as soon as possible. We are already putting the data into the Marine Recorder database and plan to finish the job in February. Any records for 2011 that come in after that may not be able to be entered and used. The 2011 data should be avaialbe on the National Biodiversity Network website during April.

We have reached 2,000 forms for 2011, which is a little below the totals for the previous two years. The split of forms and where they come from is shown in the two pie charts below.

The first and last records for 2011 both came from the same site on the Isle of Man. Tony Glen's first dive of 2011 was on 2nd January and the last on 30th December.

Our most prolific recorder in 2011 was again Deirdre Greer from Dublin (47 forms). She was followed by Graham Jackson (37) and Dawn Watson (36). Thanks to everybody who submitted data.

New Regional Reports and Newsletters

Reports of Seasearch activities in 2011 will be added to the website as they are received. Some recent ones are:

Northern Ireland Newsletter December 2011

Ireland Seasearch Highlights 2011

Seahorse Habitats Survey in Cardigan Bay

Dorset Newsletter December 2011

Seasearch Training and Qualifications

We ran 54 Seasearch courses in 2011. 34 of them were Observer Courses, 4 were Surveyor Courses and 16 Special Interest Courses (seaweeds 4, fish 1, hydroids/bryozoans 2, sponges 1, anemones and corals 1, non-native species 1, general marine life ID 5 and underwater photography 1). 36 of the courses have taken place in England with 5 each in Wales, Scotland and Ireland and 3 in the Channel Islands.

Some of the last Observer Courses demonstrate the wide range of Seasearch activities. In the north a course was held in Kirkwall, Orkney, in Spetember with diving in Scapa Flow. In the south our first ever course in Guernsey was run with 12 divers from Guernsey and Jersey participating and shore diving the following day in the autumn sunshine. (below left). November also saw our first course on a boat, in Scarborough (below right). The last course of the year was at Capernwray in Lancashire in December.

The full range of Seasearch courses will be happening again in 2012. Those already organised are already on the Training page.

During November, December and the first part of January 15 volunteers completed their Observer Qualification. They are: Andy Grant (E), Winnie Courtene-Jones (W), Stephen Parnwell (E), Kevin McIlwee (CI), Monika Krajewska-Farrell (E), Maureen Fitxgerald (I), Michael Henry (E), Phil Lightfoot (E), Steven Melvin (S), Emma Collins (E), John Brooks (E), Nick Worthington (E), Jim Muldowney (I), Steve Mustow (E) and Jillian Smith (CI).

Our latest Surveyor is Barry Lister (E) and there are a number of others who have completed all their forms and we are just waiting for them to do the ID test.

Congratulations to them all.