Our March Member's Session .....

.....showed the range of interests of members, from Paula Ferris' videos of microscopic marine life, to Jay Nicholson's trip to the South Atlantic to see Penguins, and to citizen science contribution to national databases.

Traditionally the last session of each programme is for members to gives short talks, and Paula assembled clips from her video records of watching planctonic marine life down a microscope.

It's fascinating seeing this hidden world, and memorable moments were a limpet feeding (pictured R), a skelton shrimp giving birth (pictured R), and a worm (Oerstedia dorsalis) using a sandmason worm as a refuge and emerging from its mouth (pictured R).

Jay is a keen birder, and this interest extends to penguins, and he has taken cruises to the South Atlantic to see them at the outer edges of Antarctica, and the Falkland Islands.

He showed pictures and some video of a variety - King, Gentoo, Rockhopper, Macaroni and Magellanic.

Joe Newbury from National Landscapes (formerly AONB) then ran a very useful workshop taking members throught the iNaturalist registration and use process so that people can upload their findings to a national database for ID and validation.

Coastwise now moves onto its summer programme ....see the box on the right.