Cup Corals and Cuckoo Wrasse

Divers around Cornwall are not just busy blowing bubbles anymore, but actively helping to provide the vital information needed to help conserve our marine environment for the future.

Over the past few months almost 100 recreational divers have attended Seasearch training courses around the county. The simple one day course shows them how to identify certain marine habitats and species, and how to tell us what they see whilst they explore beneath the waves.

Surveys are quick and easy to complete and it is hoped divers will report back from every dive they do. Site details and an accurate position is taken on the dive entry site. The diver is then free to 'explore' the area surrounding that central point, or do a drift dive along a transect to his exit point. Observations are taken of seabed type (eg: rocky reef, boulders, sand or gravel) and what marine life is growing on it. Marine life is noted as both broad cover type (eg: kelp forest, short or long animal turf, or animal beds) and a separate species list with abundance estimates (common, occasional or rare).

Trained divers are now carrying out these observational surveys of the underwater world to help fill in the gaps in our knowledge of what marine life is found where around our coast. Only then can we really start to protect this important environment from the many and varied threats it faces.

Some of the Seasearch surveys carried out so far have given some great results. Beautiful Scarlet and gold star-corals (Balanophyllia regia) were found off St. Agnes, kelp forests full of Cuckoo wrasse (Labrus bimaculatus = mixtus) and rock faces covered with brightly coloured Jewel anemones (Corynactis viridis) off Penzance. Crevices off Bude were home to Spiny spider crabs (Maja squinado) and Lobsters (Homarus gammarus) and the wonderfully named Potato crisp bryozoan (Pentapora fascialis) and Spiny starfish (Marthasterias glacialis) covered the reefs off Falmouth. On one dive off Durgan which everyone had dived many times before and what at first seemed like a muddy bottomed dive site covered in silt, turned out to be literally crawling with life when we started looking. Hermit crabs (Pagurus bernhardus), tube worms (including the Peacock worm Sabella pavonina and Myxicola infundibulum), burrowing anemones (Cerianthus lloydii) and even the occasional Cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) camouflaged against the sand were all recorded. The wealth of life around our coasts is amazing when you start to look and that's what Seasearch divers are doing.

All records from dives are being entered into both local and national databases and the information gathered is already being used to help monitor areas such as St. Agnes No Take Zone, and identify biodiversity hotspots. Hopefully the surveys will start to flood in and contribute to this important work and future conservation projects. We will be running more Seasearch courses and dives in the future and want to encourage as many divers out there to become involved. Any dive can be a Seasearch dive!

If you'd like to get involved please get in touch on 01872 273939.

Ruth Williams
Marine Conservation Officer

Extract from HVMCA newsletter No.27 Autumn 2003