Puffin Island..........

.....translates in Old Norse to 'Lundy', the island on the horizon. A wildlife haven, it is protected by several measures, including Statutory Marine Reserve, Marine Conservation Zone, and Special Area of Conservation.

Sian Scott spent three year there as Assistant Warden, so knows the place intimately. This, and her public educator skills, shone as she described the island's wildlife to Coastwise members.

Lundy's fauna includes Soay sheep, feral goats, a unique cross-breed of pony and Sika deer, as well as the famous seabirds - Puffins, Manx Shearwaters and Storm Petrels.

The flora includes the Lundy cabbage, a brassica found nowhere else in the world, and heavily protected.

Sian outlined how the puffin population had been saved by eradicating the rats that eeat the birds' eggs and chicks - one per pair per year laying in burrows, so the fast-breeding rats vastly out-competed the puffins. No rats ar ethought to be on the island now, and the position is constantly monitored.

The marine diversity is pectacular, due to the range of sea conditions round the island, and the statutory protection.

There are all five species of cup corals, Sea Fans with their own anenomes and sea slugs, and Atlantic Grey seals, as well as a huge variety of other species which included the very rare Red Bandfish, which live down deep burrows in the sea bed.

The marine life is accessible in rock pools and by scuba/snorkel divers in the shallow coastal water on the East of the island.

Pictured R from Top, courtesy of Sian Scott; Lundy Staff have fun with sparklers, Soay sheep. puffins, Devonshire Cupo Corals, Light Bulb sea squirts, Sea Fan with its own anenome and sea slug (you need to look very carefully for both), Lundy Cabbage.