Saturday 18th July 10:00-17:00: Members of the Lancashire MCS will be presenting an introduction to marine life, with a particular focus on life in the Bay area and the North West Coast of the UK. This course is suitable for beginners, and introduces many of the important groups of marine life, from shore plants to fish. Price £10 per person.

Booking is essential for this event, please contact us to confirm your place.

Download our poster for more details (PDF 446kB).

With the start of summer, we have a lot of practical events coming up for you! We begin with two events celebrating World Environment Day:

Friday 5th June 14:30-18:00: Gordon is leading the ‘Morecambe Bay Safari’ at the Royal Hotel, Heysham. This is followed by a guided beach walk. Meeting organised by MBP; £5 admission, booking essential: morecambebay.org.uk/events/marine-life-bay

Friday 5th June 18:00 to 18:00 6th June: Members of the MCS will be helping out at the Stanah BioBlitz (Wyre Estuary Country Park, River Road, Stanah, FY5 5LR). We will have a stand at this event on the Saturday, but local members will be available for much of the rest of the event, helping to ID marine life from two boat trawls of the estuary itself.

Following this we have our first meeting of the year at Capernwray Dive Centre:

Wednesday 10th June 19:30-20:30 Morecambe Bay Cycle Way by Louise Smail. This will look at the new cycle way which now runs along the whole length of the Bay. Admission £2, all welcome. Download our poster (PDF, 102kB), or view the location in Google Maps.

Saturday 20th June 11:00 to 11:00 21st June: The Formby BioBlitz will be attended by members of the National MCS

Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th June we hope to have a stand at the Morecambe Bay Kite Festival

hope you can join us!

Barry Kaye
(Chairman, Lancashire MCS)

A short, but instructive, video about the dangers of our addiction to plastic for National Geographic. Plastic is the major component of beach litter, it is the cause of death for large numbers of sea creatures every year, and is finding its way into our diet. Thanks to Fiona for pointing me at this!

Over the winter our meetings will be moving to the second TUESDAY of each month, starting in November. Meetings will be in the cinema, upstairs at the Gregson Centre, 33 Moore Gate, Lancaster, LA1 3PY.

The new venue offers us banked seating for 25, with full slide/video projection facilities. The next meetings are:

Tuesday 11th November: Guide to anemones (cnidaria) by Gordon Fletcher (local area group), plus a short Beachwatch annual review by Jo Kaye (local area group). All welcome, admission will be £2.

Tuesday 9th December: Annual review, AGM, quiz! Free admission; all are welcome, but only MCS members can vote at the AGM (please bring proof of membership).

We are very grateful to the Gregson for accommodation over the winter period.

The group had another visit to the Oban area in September, the weather was overcast, but mostly dry. The underwater visibility was poor for the West Coast of Scotland, but the diving otherwise good, with a couple of interesting drift dives through the Creran Narrows, and other dives in the surrounding area.

Above: Using dramatic lighting to overcome some of the problems with poor visibility (Photo by Barry – thanks to Lewis for the lighting!)

Many thanks to Gordon for organising this visit. Note: There are still places free on our return visit to Oban on the 10th October (see our diary for more information)

Above: A photo taken at the Roa Island Yacht club just before the swim on the 21st September 2014 (click for larger version).

On the 17th August we were unable to swim due to bad weather (see post), and we were worried when we arrived on the 21st that we would be unable to get away because of building work on the jetty, which meant that our intended access to the beach was blocked! Thankfully Roa Island Boating Club came to our rescue, allowing us to set off from their slip. One of our swimmers also started from the yacht club, extending the swim to just short of two miles, the others took a lift on the support boats and left as intended from close to the Lifeboat slip, and everyone made it to the Piel Island slipway without mishap.

Unlike our attempt in August, the weather was perfect, warm, with clear skies and almost mirror flat water. The visibility was also excellent – we could see the bottom without being able to reach touch it from the surface! A very pleasant day out for everyone, and a big thank you again to boat crews who patiently looked after the swimmers!

We have currently raised £182 for National MCS – and you can still sponsor us through our ‘JustGiving site: justgiving.com/lancashiremcs/

INSERT_MAP

Above – photo taken after the big beach clean on Saturday 20th September 2014.

Locals have been working hard to keep the beach tidy, and it was good to see it in a pretty clean condition when we arrived. There was much less sewage related waste than we have seen in the past, which is also good news, but expected as we have had a prolonged period of calm weather. Less good, we found our first sharp on the beach, a discarded hypodermic needle. Otherwise most of the rubbish was cigarette ends and sweety wrappers, almost certainly left by visitors to the beach.

Thanks to Sandra Moon of Morecambe and Heysham Soroptomists and Lancashire MCS for organising our local annual big beach clean at Half Moon Bay, Heysham.

Due to bad weather over the weekend (with wind speeds gusting to over 50KPH), we were obliged to cancel our swim across the Piel channel, we are hoping to re-schedule this for the weekend of the 20th September.

If you would like to sponsor this event (proceeds to National MCS), please visit our ‘JustGiving’ site:

justgiving.com/lancashiremcs/

Sefton Coastal Path Part 1: Linear walk from Waterloo (Crosby) to Formby
Saturday 22nd March 2014

Meeting at Ainsdale Station car park, Chesterfield Rd, Ainsdale at 09:50am (in time to buy a ticket and catch the 10:07am train to Waterloo). The car park is free for all rail users. Grid Ref SD 311122

The walk is a mixture of tarmac surfaces (minor roads, promenade and cycle tracks), rough tracks, footpaths , sand dunes and the beach. The distance is about 8 miles, with the option of an extension near Formby, The route includes Antony Gormley’s statues at Crosby and varied coastal and inland scenery (a lengthy inland detour is necessary to avoid the Altcar Army Range).

Return is by train from Formby Station to Ainsdale Station. Trains are at 07, 22, 37 and 52 minutes past the hour.

Bring food and drink for the day, waterproofs and sunglasses (depending on the weather)

Footwear – walking boots or sturdy shoes are recommended, some mud is possible.

Return train tickets are currently £4.15 (adult).

There is a toilet at Aisndale station which can be opened for rail users. Also toilets at Waterloo Interchange (30p as 5p 10p or 20p coins). There is also a toilet at Hall Road on the route of the walk (30p, 10p coins only) .

Maps Landranger no 108 (Liverpool) or Explorer Nos. 275 and 285.

Any of you who have attended one of our marine plants ID courses will recall that we are a bit hazy about identifying the coralline, pink encrusting species. It looks as though our reticence (or ineptitude!) on this topic is more than justified, with recent genetic studies from Mexico indicating that their most common coralline alga is actually a community of five species.

Science Daily – coralline algae species

(New ID courses are planned for 2014 – see our diary for more information)