Working in marine lab I.O.M - Benthic Ecology

While living on the Isle of Man I stumbled upon a marine lab in Port Erin. It's behind a clothes shop and there were two lab technicians working. I got chatting and found out it used for a environmental company whose offices were upstairs.

I explored further and met Terry and Salma who run an environmental consultants on the island. They mentioned that both the current lab employees would soon be leaving. It seemed too good an opportunity to miss so I left my contact details and mentioned I would love to work there. 

Rowan is from the island so she began work when a free space arose. Me, still recovering from my knee surgery had to wait a few weeks before I got the chance to work. 

We were given the title of Benthic Ecologist. Our main job was to sort, float and sieve the samples taken with a day grab from whatever site was been surveyed. We had to follow a strict protocol to ensure no steps were missed out as this may effect to final results. 

After the substrate had been washed, sieved and floated, Using a magnifying lense and flat edged tweeers we shifted through the sand making sure not to miss any fourna which was alive when the grab was taken. We then split what we found into; molluscs, crustaceans, polycetes, eccinaderms and "other". 

I.O.M S.O.S

As promised here's an update:

I.O.M S.o.S is now an established facebook group with over 200 followers. Rowan, my girlfriend, is the group creator and is responsibly for the majority of post and updates. 

As we have both been away to Vietnam the group was put on hold till we returned. It's now back up and running. With weekly post about marine life and conservation in the Isle of Man. 

In the future we plan on raising the awareness of the gernal public to the impacts human have on the ocean with the interest of reducing our human impact on the island. We also want to add pressure on policy makers and industry to take measures to protect the oceans. 

Rowan is organising an ocean art show at the end of January in partership with IOM SOS. The idea is to use art and film to promote ocean conservation. 

Diving Isle of Man- Discover Diving

During the summer I worked at Discover Diving, Port St Mary. The only dive center left on the Isle of Man.

The owners, Michael are Steve were friendly and I found it easy to become part of the diving team.

I enjoyed my time diving with them which included training dives and leading fun dives. Most of the training dives were conducted off a pier in Port Erin while on fun dives we used the state of the art, Endeavour, as the dive boat (see photo below). 

The water temperature varied from 14c to 16c so I wore a dry suite for all of my dives.

I also took my PADI enriched air diving or nitrox course with Discover Diving. This is a ticket I've wanted to get for a while now. Diving with nitrox means you use oxygen enriched air so you are exposed to less nitrogen, this makes longer and frequent diving safer. 

The Isle of Man is home to an abundance of pristine underwater ecosystems. Sandy bottoms and rocky shores dominate the coast line with areas of beautiful edges and cliffs. A huge variety of organisms can be spotted from tiny nudibranchs and gloomy dead man fingers to massive brown crabs, lobsters and an array of pelagic fish. The island is home to a vast common and grey seal population which although I didn't get chance to dive with I free dived with the seals many times, so much fun. 

Big Thanks to Michelle, Steve, Anne and the rest of the dive crew. Hopefully I'll be back to dive with you again but for now it's be great. 

http://www.discoverdiving.im

For reference: 

Michelle Haywood- +44(0)7624 300090

                               Michelle@discoverdiving.im

Basking Shark Watch- I.O.M

I've recently moved to the Isle of Man after returning home from south east Asia. I'm waiting for an operation to fix my knee (ruptured ACL). While I'm waiting though it's been great to move to the island. Being by the sea and my girlfriend makes the waiting far more enjoyable. 

Basking sharks, which are the second largest fish in the ocean, pass through the Isle of Man following thermal fronts which provide an abundance of planktonic food. Sadly they are listed as endangered on the ICUN red list due to hunting, bycatch and disturbance (http://www.mcsuk.org/conservation_in_action/Basking+sharks/Threats+to+basking+sharks). 

The Manx basking shark watch was established to observe the abundance of basking sharks around the Isle of Man, raise awareness of the public to basking sharks and report the importance of the island to the basking shark population. This summer I was fortunate enough to join the team of researchers on the Happy Jack (photo below) on a observation mission to spot and record any marine life observations with the focus on basking sharks. 

We set off from port st Mary in the morning. Straight away we had a radio call reporting minke whale sightings. A local fishing boat made the observation near the calf of man. We set off on the 15min journey to spot the whales. Along the way I was pleased to see the abundance of marine birds (cormorants, 

Kittiwakes and Guillemots), common and grey seals and we were even lucky enough to see a Harbour porpoise. 

Unfortunately before we made it to the calf the Happy Jack suffered prop damage. We had to return to the Harbour and cancel the mission. Maybe better luck next time.

The Manx basking shark watch has been making recordings for 10 years. This year will see the release of a ten year report which aims to highlight the importance the waters of Isle of Man has to the global basking shark population. It may be used to promote the establishment of a designated protected area for basking sharks around the island. 

Sadly, 2014 has seen the lowest number of shark recordings in the past 10 years with only 9 sightings made this summer (manxbaskingsharkwatch.com). Plankton measurements have shown that zooplankton levels are low. This maybe due to unusually warm sea temperatures. In any case the zooplankton are a vital food source for basking sharks, a major reason why the sharks come to these waters. Without this food source the basking sharks have found differant feeding waters. Tags for previous years show some individuals are further north in cooler waters.

This is a great example of how a change in climate effects biotic communities within ecosystems. Whether this years warm temperatures were caused by human induced climate change, natural cycles (possible El Niño recorded in 2014?) or mixture of both it is clear to see a change in climate has effected plankton populations which has in turn effected basking shark populations. 

To me this highlights the importance of reducing human induced changes to the earths environment. Humans are disrupting natures balance, we don't yet fully understand the complexity and intricacy of the earths ecosystem, if we continue to disturb this delicate balance we don't know what may happen around the world. Lets work together to ensure we are living on a healthy life supporting earth. 

http://www.manxbaskingsharkwatch.com

Diving in Cambodia

I've been working at Koh Rong Dive Centre for 2 weeks now. It's been great to be under the water everyday and gain some useful experience. 

During the work I've been taking customers on fun dives also giving divers who haven't dived in the last 2 years a refresher course. During this course we go through some vital emergency skills, practice buoyancy control and go diving! This makes the customer feel more comfortable in the water allowing them to enjoy diving much more. I also took new divers on discover scuba diving (DSD) courses. This is a one day course which gives the new diver a few basic but vital skills before going diving in less then 10m. It's nice to see the reaction of divers who are doing it for the first time. For fun dives i gave the customers the dive breif giving them all he information they need before the dive. At first I felt it was difficult to remember all the information but after a few days it's easy and I enjoy meeting all the customers. 

The diving around Koh Rong is good, there are some nice reefs and nice dive sites. However due to the recent weather the visibility is often low (5-8m). Although I'd prefer better visabilty I gained valuable experience of how to lead dives in low visabilty. Yesterday we had 15m vis which was real nice! I've often also been in charge of the boat which includes; ensuring the boat has all the equipment we need including kits, tanks and food, giving he customers a boat breif and taking roll calls to make sure we don't leave anyone behind.

The reefs here are full of fish and other marine life, some examples of what we see follows;

- parrotfish

- pufferfish

- blue spotted rays

- butterflyfish

- angelfish

- damsel fish

- banner fish

- barracuda 

- makeral

- nudibranchs

- corals (compact, mushroom, soft)

- anemones 

I plan on staying another few weeks, Koh Rong is an amazing place to live and I'm enjoying the diving. Thanks to everyone at Koh Rong diving. It's a lot of fun.

So true

Photo from protest in Australia against a proposed shark cull.

Beach clean: Koh Rong, Cambodia

Beach clean on koh Rong. Heavy storms and high tides left plastics, weeds and other debri of the beach. We filled 8 bags!

Diving in Ko Samet

On the 9th of January I flew out to Bangkok to begin a trip around SE Asia aiming to end in Australia where I plan on working. Currently I'm in Battanbang, Cambodia.

Our first stop after Bangkok was Ko Samet. It's a tiny island which in some parts is undeveloped and undistribed but other beaches have loud Russian trance playing most nights.

Anyways whilst on Ko Samet I went to speak to Mong at Mong Divers. After i told him my qualifications he said I should go in the shallows with his two thai instructors and practice some skills. After that he said there was a dive in the afternoon at the local reef. I got to dive for free and even ended up leading the dive with two paying customers. Was difficult at first as I had never dived the site but once I got us on the right direction it was a fun dive. Sadly the reef isn't exactly the most healthy with dead corals and a lack of life. However due to the water flow there are some large giant clams and we also saw two hermit crabs engaged in a shell wrapping battle over ownership of the biggest shell. Was fun to watch and you could hear the banging of the shells as they hit together. Both customers said they enjoyed the dive and thought I did a good job.

Afterwards Mong said I was welcome to go back anytime and I asked him about any conservation projects on the island. He showed me pictures of various projects they run and also said they have links with Marine Biologist at universities in Thailand. They had successful reintroduced sea grass, ran a clownfish introduction program and released infant sharks on the island. Would of been great to stay to help out but as it wa the first stop of the trip I felt like there maybe more to offer. I can always go back as Mong said I have a open invitation. It was a great expirence and good start to the trip and although it's a beautiful location (see photo) I expect other island in the south of Thailand will have much better dive with healthy reefs. Thank you Mr.Mong see you again soon.