The return of our annual Christmas quiz, with more fiendish and fun questions prepared by Lewis to test your knowledge of current, local and maritime trivia…

Christmas quiz poster (327 kB PDF)

A talk by Alexandra and Jonathan Bujak (Azolla Foundation)

49 million years ago a plant called azolla covered the surface of the Arctic Ocean. The Arctic Azolla Event lasted 1.2 million years, during which time azolla sequestered enormous quantities of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the Earth’s atmosphere, and moved our planet’s climate from a greenhouse world to the ice-age climate, with permanent ice and snow at both poles…

If you would like to know more, The Azolla Story: A message from the future by Jonathan Bujak and Alexandra Bujak is available from Amazon.

Alternative Zoom meeting details are available through our Newsletter – you can subscribe here.

All are welcome, we request a donation of £4 to cover costs of room hire and speaker expenses.

Wednesday 11^th January 2023 at 19:30 at Lancaster Maritime Museum.

On the 23rd July 2022, Mark and Caitlin Woombs, Jean Wilson, Lewis and myself dived deep into our collections to present a course on Crustacea to the Royal Society of Biology as guests of the Wyre Estuary Country Park. The course started with a general introduction to marine crustacea – one of the most diverse groups of animals on the planet – by Mark. This was followed by a maze building experiment, overseen by Caitlin, to show how simple experiments demonstrate that shore crabs can learn quite complex tasks.

Jean had gathered large numbers of shore crab moults from the beach at Knott End, which were used to see how the population is developing through the early part of the year. The rough graph of carapace widths, produced during the practical session, is reproduced above.

I updated an old presentation on ‘Colour underwater’ to look more specifically at sensory perception in crustacea – a fascinating field that I think went down OK, and I hope I can revisit in our winter lecture series later this year. Finally, Lewis tied the afternoon off with a review of all things crustacean in the form of a quiz. How many legs has it got?

Thanks to Jean for organising, and to Alison Boden and the staff at the Wyre Estuary Country Park for making us very welcome!

Barry Kaye, Lancashire MCS

At the George and Dragon, Wednesday November 10th at 19:30. Donations requested to Lancashire MCS.

Photograph above: Designated a Marine Protected area to protect (bottom images from left to right) flame shells, Northern feather stars and serpulid worms; the protection of Loch Sunart has allowed the recovery of species such as the spur dog, a relative of the catshark (top). All photos by Mark Woombs

Join marine biologist Mark Woombs as he explores the underwater life of Loch Sunart; from the Sound of Mull to the sheltered waters at the head of the Loch by Strontian (the only town in the world to have a chemical element named after it!). Loch Sunart has been designated as a ‘Scottish Marine Protected Area’, and features a wide range of habitats that are home to some of the most interesting and colourful marine life in British waters.

Please help prevent the spread of COVID by taking a Lateral Flow Test on the morning before joining us!

A big thanks to everyone who turned out on Sunday for the MCS Great British Beach Clean at Half Moon Bay, Heysham. Despite the downpour just before the event we had a good turn out – and the weather turned warm and sunny! Again the beach was pretty clean, allowing us to clean the entire length of the beach down to the high tide mark, collecting only 3.2kg of litter. This did, however, included some sanitary waste – wet-wipes, panty liners, ear cleaners and dog poo, so there is still room for improvement! National MCS will collect all of the data and publish it on their website.

Our next beach clean will be in early December, but we have a short set of winter talks planned starting before then, in November. If you would like to keep up to date with activities, please sign up for our Newsletter:

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We do not share subscription details with anyone else without your prior permission; you can unsubscribe at any time through the link at the foot of the Newsletter, or through the subscribe/unsubscribe page above (and linked from all pages on our website).

Report by Barry Kaye

Our first Roa Island shore walk this year took place on Saturday 24^th July.  Understandably, given the late decision to hold this, turnout was lower than normal but 5 of us had an interesting time scouring the shore for life. Sadly the first find of any interest was 30-40m of discarded fishing line tangled in the wrack under the walkway to lifeboat station. This took about 20 minutes of patient work to disentangle it so that it could be taken away for disposal. Thankfully the rest of the beach was relatively clear of litter!

We saw quite a large number of Pacific oysters Crassostrea Gigas (sometimes known as Portuguese Oyster).  These are a non-native commercial species; it’s possible that they have originated from oyster farms in the Menai Straits, although there is an oyster hatchery on Walney Island that puts some immature stock in the Bay to grow on before selling them on to other farms to mature and this may be the source too.

It was noticeable that there were quite a few large pieces of dislodged sponge and sea squirts, probably from deeper water, at the low water line.  It wasn’t clear how these had been dislodged, whether it was manmade disturbance – we didn’t see a dredger while we were there for instance – or a natural process, but it did bring some species to view that we may not have seen otherwise.  For instance these Oaten Pipe hydroids (Tubularia indivisa) living on one of the detached sponges.

Barry tried some plankton trawls in the shallows where large numbers of mysid shrimp and small (juvenile) fish were swimming against the incomming tide, hoping for it to bring them supper! Microscopic examination revealed a phytoplankton community dominated by pennate diatoms (Proboscia alatum and Rhizosolenia sp.), though we did see one centric diatom Odontella mobiliensis. The trawl also contained some lanceolate Naviculacea (Pleurosigma sp. – probably angulatum), and one example of Bacillaria paxillifera; these are typically benthic/surface dwelling diatoms, but very commony found in shallow water trawls. There were also a number of periwinkle (Littorina littorea) eggs and newly hatched ‘velligers’. Juvenile periwinkles (the ‘velligers’) are planktonic, and use cillia covered extensions of their ‘foot’ (called a ‘vellum’) to swim. This mode of propulsion is very effective in the smaller juveniles, allowing them to make respectable swimming speeds (Olympic qualifiers – for ther size!) as they actively hunt for food, which is usually smaller zooplankton.

Lockdown has meant that the best tides for this have passed us by this year, but this was the first of two dates that we picked as having the chances of interesting finds.  The timing of Spring tides around Morecambe Bay means that the very lowest tides – when we have the best chance of finding some of the creatures that are normally hidden – happen around 6 or 7 am, of 6 or 7 pm, so daylight times are a factor in choosing dates too. 

Our next walk is on the calendar for Wednesday 8th September at 19:00 (Low water 0.95m at 19:42, just before sunset).

Report by Lewis Bambury with additions on microscopy by Barry Kaye.

As we are not able to hold our usual winter meetings, we have been looking into moving these online. These meetings are by invitation through our newsletter (you can subscribe here).

Our first meeting (on Wednesday the 2nd December) will be:

Prickly customers – your online guide to echinoderms! by Mark Woombs. (Please note that invitations to this meeting went out in our December newsletter).

Planned future meetings include:

• The lives of Jellyfish by Gordon Fletcher
• Identification of phytoplankton by Barry Kaye
• Crustacea by Lewis Bambury

Barry Kaye

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others. Leonardo da Vinci

Plants are rather different – quietly converting sunlight into the food we need to survive; the shepherd with his grazing flock is the subject of a painting, the meadow, a beaucolic backdrop. In the worlds oceans, however, the plants that form the meadow are microscopic – completely invisible to the naked eye. Indeed, for most of the 20th century, the main players remained elusive even to the best optical microscopes!

Over the last decade or so satellite imagery, coupled to unmanned submersibles, have begun to reveal the true extent of marine ‘plant life’. We find a complex, dynamic pattern of blooms, and rapid disappearances keyed to the seasons, currents and climate. Alongside this, genetics has begun to unravel the complexities of the interrelationships between the different groups of marine plants – and animals…

Join us on Wednesday 13th February between⋅19:30 and 21:00 at the Gregson Centre, 33 – 35 Moor Gate, Lancaster LA1 3PY for a personal look at some of the recent research in this area.
Admission £3.00, everybody welcome!

Contributing to the festive season, we have an illustrated talk on ‘Marine Jellies’ by Gordon Fletcher on the 13th December. Gordon is a good story teller, and an excellent marine life photographer. I cannot think of a more able person to bring some of the strangest and most beautiful creatures in our seas to life for us!

Wed. 13th December 1t 19:30 ‘Marine Jellies’ by Gordon Fletcher (Lancashire MCS)
Meeting in the cinema upstairs at the Gregson Community Centre, Lancaster, LA1 3PY. Admission £2 – all are welcome!

The Saturday of the kite festival was particularly windy this year, and with a high tide at mid day there was not much beach to fly kites from, but still an excellent display. It was fun to see a diver (being chased by a very wide mouthed shark;-), and multi-coloured squid floating above the Bay, rather than swimming beneath its waters!

Despite the wind our stand had a steady stream of visitors, and it was a pleasure, as every year, to chat to people about the diversity of life in the Bay. This year we had a collection of typical finds from the local beaches, including cuttlebones and a range of shark and ray egg cases, making a nice symmetry with the kites! Lewis also brought along a couple of Common Skate egg cases found on the Orkney Isles. Sadly, whilst these were common (it’s in the name!) they are now almost extinct, and it will take a major change in attitude towards marine resource management for us to find these on the shores of Morecambe Bay again.

Thanks to everyone who visited our stand over the weekend, and special thanks to Jo, Lewis, Hilary and Gordon for helping out over the two days, and Kathy for organising!