So Marine Week(s) ended on Sunday and what a whirl wind of events it’s been! National Marine Week is a Wildlife Trust wide campaign that ran from the 23rd of July until the 7th of August to increase the awareness of marine life. Events across the last few weeks have included Rockpool Rambles, Marine Mudness, Seawatches and Guided Walks. Day long events have included Beached Art and the first South Walney Family fun day. We’ve been stretched from Cumbria down to Lancashire attracting people of all ages to our events.
During the week before Marine Week we joined Dave down in Blackpool for some Seawatch Training for National Whale and Dolphin Watch Week running from the 23rd to the 31st of July with the Sea Watch Foundation. Whilst the other trainees had no experience using the forms it was nice to have a refresher of the forms after my time volunteering with the charity last year. We spent 2 hours on Blackpool beach scanning the sea in the sunshine whilst we were getting reports of thunderstorms in Cumbria!
Marine Week kick started with a weekend of Seawatches at St Bees and at South Walney Nature Reserve with unfortunately no sightings. In the week to follow the trainees were split across multiple Rockpool Rambles at Earnsey Bay and down in Half Moon Bay Lancashire along with a guided walk at South Walney. I participated in another Seawatch in Heysham which had a great turn out but weather conditions made it hard to spot marine mammals. I also went along to observe a mud dipping session in Lytham St Annes with the RSPB to see how another organisation carries out events. That Thursday was my first Marine Mudness event at Hest Bank in which I had spent a lot of time planning. Around 12 people turned up despite the rainy weather and the event was a success and I received some positive feedback from my program manager who was observing!
That weekend was Beached Art which is held annually at St Bees. We drove up on the Friday to set up but the timetable was pushed back due to the pick up truck having a oil leak so we had to turn around to organise a rescue mission!I drove up to St Bees on my own from then to meet everyone on the site to help set up the yurt style marque. Beached Art was a success on the Saturday with Rockpool Rambles, Seawatches and the Sand Sculpture competition running at set times . We had arts and crafts, a muddy marine conservation zone information board, marine artefacts, mobile rock pool and face painting running all day and we believe we interacted with nearly 250 people!
Last week we scheduled another Seawatch in at Maryport due to the high interest of them in the previous week. Thanks to Suzie scouting out the area the watch point was amazing! We could see right over to Scotland and out to the Irish Sea just in the mouth of the Solway. The conditions were perfect so it wasn’t long before we spotted our first fin – a harbour porpoise and it’s calve! It stayed with us for over an hour and a half as the tide turned and appeared to be feeding as the mother was splashing about and moving quite rapidly through the water before returning to it’s baby.
I also carried out my first guided walk at South Walney which was going great until the last 20 mins when it began to rain but we got to see the seals and the families provided some generous feedback about all the things they had learnt on the walk. I also had experience with my first Rockpool Ramble events for a birthday party and during a joint event with Lancashire Wildlife Trust called Life on the Shore. During this event we also played Strandline Detectives looking for objects in the seaweed washed up and Rubbish Relay before rounding off about marine litter. One boy put his hand up to say he was bringing his scouts group back to do a beach clean!
Last weekend was the first South Walney Family Day on Saturday in which we had face painting, arts and crafts, marine artefacts, the mobile rock pool and litter story telling set up in the yurt. I had a marque to myself promoting the muddy marine conservation zones and the creatures of the Irish Sea with mud rolling art. There was also story telling with a book called ‘Somebody Swallowed Stanley’ about a plastic bags journey though the ocean which went down a treat and helped raise awareness of marine litter.
On Sunday I attended my first Grange-over-Sands Wildlife Watch group at Arnside for a couple of hours at the beach. We scanned the shore line for animals and walked along to do a litter pick whilst I spoke to the children about marine life and litter. We then stopped for a short break with sweets and rounded the session up watching the tide go out and drew pictures of our favourite animals in the sand and found fossils.
This week things have started to wind down event wise and I managed to make it up to Eycott Hill to do some terrestrial habitat monitoring looking at heath land and dry/wet grassland species. We were rained on but the day was enjoyable! I’ve also helped out down in Lancashire with a Beach Bonanza with a Scavenger Hunt. We have presentation skills coming up as we’ll be presenting at lots of local groups and conferences in the coming months. I also have the Hodbarrow Family Fun Day to run this Sunday where I’ve been monitoring the terns so my to-do-list is currently very long – wish me luck!
I’m nearly half way through the traineeship so I’ll do another update soon.
Thanks for reading, Jade x
Jades Blog 