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Lords Marine Bill expert to speak

The successful Our Coast course will start the New Year with a very special session. Baroness Sue Miller, a member of the influential Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Draft Marine Bill, which has done much to strengthen it, will start off Coastwise’s new Our Coast course on 8th January with a talk about the Bill.

The meeting will take place at Barnstaple Library from 10 am to 12 noon. It is open to members of Coastwise North Devon. There may still be places available on the course for those wishing to join Coastwise ahead of time, or on the door subject to space.

Foraging for fishy facts – recording oral history of the coast for DWT

Coastwise North Devon is a newly formed organisation which promotes knowledge, enthusiasm and care for our seas and coastline. Working in association with Devon Wildlife Trust we are launching an oral history project on Tuesday 21st October, at Ilfracombe Museum. We will be collecting information from people with any knowledge of how the marine life of our local coast has changed during the last sixty years or so.

Latest Shore Thing survey – monitoring the local marine life

On 28th September a dozen members of Coastwise took part in monitoring the shore at Lee Bay, near Ilfracombe. They sampled the shore and counted the plants and animals from the upper to lower shore under the guidance of marine expert Pip Jollands from Hallsannery Field Centre.

The results are sent to the marine monitoring organization MarLin at Plymouth as part of the Shore Thing project where each year’s results can be compared with others and provide information about changing populations. Amongst the main influences are climate change and the influx of alien species

Bucking the trend? An unusual limpet

Shore enthusiast Paula Ferris found a tiny, less that 1cm, Tortoiseshell Limpet at Lee in mid September, a first for her, and a very unusual sighting for the south of England. Normally it is found on northern coasts. Staff at the marine data recording centre, MarLin, are keen to find out more the North Devon occurrence which runs counter to the more general experience that species are moving north under the influence of warmer waters. Paula says “I don’t know why I took my magnifying glass to such a tiny shell.

Making its mark already.

Coastwise North Devon is already having an impact, within months of its formation.

Local organisations have given the initiative a warm welcome, and collaborations are underway with input into Devon Wildlife Trust’s Living Seas project now being planned, and representation on the North Devon’s Biosphere Partnership in the offing.

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