Seasearch funders
Acknowledgement of financial support for the programme
Image by Alison Moore
The majority of the financial support for the Seasearch programme is provided by the Marine Conservation Society. This includes three employees (the National Coordinator, the Data Officer and the Administrator) and a number of the regional coordinators.
Seasearch Scotland
Financial support for the entire Seasearch programme in Scotland is provided by our long-standing funder, NatureScot (previously Scottish Natural Heritage), under a multi-year memorandum of agreement.
Seasearch Northern Ireland
A generous grant from DAERA’s (Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs) Environment Fund 2023-2028 in Northern Ireland is enabling us to expand the Seasearch programme there, including a full-time coordinator, and increased partnership work with Ulster Wildlife (and other organisations).
Financial support for the Seasearch programme in Wales was provided by Natural Resources Wales (previously the Countryside Council for Wales) over a long period.
Seasearch are currently (2020-2024) involved in the EU LIFE ReMEDIES project, covering five Special Areas of Conservation along the south and south-east coasts of England. The project, funded by the EU LIFE programme and led by Natural England in partnership with The Royal Yachting Association, Marine Conservation Society, Ocean Conservation Trust and Plymouth City Council/Tamar Estuaries Consultative Forum is focusing on how sensitive seabed habitats are impacted by recreational activities.
The MCS is the marine partner within the Natur am Byth! flagship Green Recovery project in Wales, leading on the "Welsh Marine treasures" project. NaB! unites nine environmental charities with Natural Resources Wales (NRW) to deliver the country's largest natural heritage and outreach programme to save species from extinction and reconnect people to nature.
Stage 2 of the NHLF-funded project commenced in September 2023.
Natural England have provided financial support for a number of specific projects in England recently, including analysis of species assemblages, recording and reporting of maerl habitats and data cleansing of the Seasearch England dataset. The commissioned reports arising are linked from the Reports page.
Seasearch were the public engagement partner of the Marine Biological Association in the first stage of the ambitious Darwin Tree of Life project (2020-2022). DToL aims to sequence the genomes of all 70,000 species of eukaryotic organisms in Britain and Ireland. It is a collaboration between biodiversity, genomics and analysis partners that hopes to transform the way we do biology, conservation and biotechnology. Seasearch volunteers continue to liaise with researchers on the project to identify marine life which we observe and record, although we no longer receive funding from the project.
"The Oyster Ark" was a project led by Heriot-Watt University (Prof. W.G. Sanderson) which aimed to seek out remnant wild Scottish oyster habitats, assess their population sizes, disease status, presence of aggressive Invasive Non Native Species (INNS), and, where appropriate, move a portion as brood-stock to Scotland's biosecure hatchery to spawn future generations. Tens of thousands of oysters will be returned to bolster the remnant wild populations. The native oyster Ostrea edulis is a Priority Marine Feature (PMF) for conservation in Scotland.
The project was funded by NatureScot's Biodiversity Challenge Fund for the financial year 2021-2022.
