Surveys and Seaweed

All of a sudden, we find ourselves into our final two weeks of the field work in New Quay. With the season creeping to an end we’ve still been working hard doing land watches and getting out on the water as much as the weather allows. We’ve had three incredible surveys in the last three weeks, with some amazing dolphin encounters.



The volunteers have witnessed plenty of Mothers showing off their cute newborns, while some of the juvenile pranksters were spotted playing with seaweed and generally getting up to no good! We are pleased to see that one of our more popular residents (and one of our adopted dolphins), nicknamed ‘Chris’ has given birth to a gorgeous calf, and we can’t wait to see more of them.





Some new faces have turned up in New Quay. A couple of Grey Seal pups have been spotted lounging around the coast – all fluffy and white - so cute! Don’t get too close though, they might not like it!

Back in July Sea Watch was lucky enough to secure grant funding from Environment Wales. This is for an environmental film educational workshops. These workshops are being run by Kirsten Hintner (a documentary film maker), alongside help from Sea Watch volunteers. One lucky class from Greenhill school in Tenby have been participating in the workshops this week. This project introduces the children involved to the process of producing short environmental films to encourage them to think about their local coastal and marine environment, while learning how to look after and conserve it.



Yesterday (Thursday), the group of ten came up to New Quay to learn about our work and film us in the field. While here they interviewed Jess and Kerry (two volunteers) asking them some important environmental questions about their chosen subject of Marine Pollution, the Cardigan Bay bottlenose dolphin population and the work of the Sea Watch Foundation.





The group also went out on one of the Ermol boat trips, run by New Quay Boat Trips. It turned out to be lucky, three bottlenose dolphins were spotted and several seals. It was a fun experience all round, and the weather managed to behave itself for most of the day.

So for another week it’s all still happening here at Sea Watch. Weather permitting we’ll be keeping track of the bottlenose dolphins. Soon most of them will head back to north Wales for the Winter (following the fish). It has been lot's of fun and we are all sad that the season is coming to an end so soon!

Love
The Sea Watch Team
www.seawatchfoundation.org.uk

Risso Lucky!

It has been a busy fortnight here in New Quay. The August Bank holiday saw the Sea Watch team saying good bye to a couple of volunteers and welcoming two new recruits. The next 6 weeks will be exciting and educational for new volunteers. They will learn skills and techniques that will assist in the monitoring of the Cardigan Bay Special Area of Conservation. We hope that they settle well into life here by the sea and look forward to team bonding at the local pub!

Last week with the return of the glorious Welsh weather the Sea Watch team made the most of it. Dedicated surveys were conducted most days and not only in the south of the Bay. In fact, some of the Sea Watch team ventured up to the Lleyn Peninsula in the north of Cardigan Bay. Here we collaborated with the Countryside Council for Wales.

The two organisations surveyed from Bardsey Island and out east towards Harlech. A number of different marine mammals were seen during the surveys, grey seals, harbour porpoise, and bottlenose dolphin. On one lucky day ten Risso dolphins were seen. For many of the survey team it was the first time seeing this species. Risso dolphins are an occasional visitor to the north of Cardigan Bay and can be very active. They enjoy splashing , slapping and breaching, which is a great way to identify their location offshore.

Get Your Sighting In!

National Whale and Dolphin Watch week (7th - 15th August 2010) took off with a flying start on Saturday. Sea Watch volunteers were busy celebrating the start of the event with sand sculptures down on New Quay beach, Wales with further fun activities up on the pier wall.



Down on the beach the imagination was running free with a pod of bottlenose dolphins (Dolphina, Fin and Charlie) chasing fish with their calf Sophie, while Octo the octopus was trying his luck at catching Kate the crab. Meanwhile S.S.N. - the lost narwhale was busy trying to retrace his course back to the Artic.





Thanks to all the enthusiastic children who busily created amazing sculptures with us!



Up on the pier, joined by Bella the Bear (http://adventuresofedthebear.blogspot.com/) Sea Watch volunteers and children alike decorated themselves with aquatic inspired face painting, with colouring competitions and the resident bottlenose dolphins providing more entertainment for New Quay visitors.



Four days into the watch and we've received an astounding 100 sightings with an incredibly early 04:42am sighting of a minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) by Kevin Hepworth North East of Fraserburgh in Scotland! Check out our sightings webpage for the latest real time entries (http://www.seawatchfoundation.org.uk/event-data2010.php).

Our dedicated Sea Watch team will continue to be down on the pier and out and about around New Quay, and with many other voluntary manned watches going on around the country please feel free to join in! Check out our website for more details.

Go on get your sighting in!

Sea Watch Foundation Team
www.seawatchfoundation.org.uk

Sea Watch to the rescue!

At around 4:00pm Monday afternoon, the Sea Watch volunteers in the New Quay office received a frantic call from volunteer Jess down on land watch at the pier. She had spotted a bird struggling in the water with something stuck on its bill! Not sure whether or not it would survive much longer, she called up for someone to come rescue the poor creature. Volunteers Danielle and Jenna headed down to the pier to take a look and try to plot a recovery plan.

After looking around for some kind of net to catch the bird in (it had swum out to far for them to grab from land), a local boater was asked to assist with the rescue by taking Danielle out in his boat so she could catch the bird. The bird was wary of the boat and dived every time it approached - so this plan was quickly abandoned. Plan B was soon decided upon and an attempt to herd the bird into the rocks by two kayakers(father and son) while Danielle stood ready with the net.

After a few tries it was plan C was created, this time to herd the bird towards Dolau beach. Danielle and Jenna bravely waded into the water with the net stretched between them waiting for the kayakers to bring the bird in.

After several misses with nets and buckets, the father of the kayaking duo was able to grab the bird and attempted to pry the shell off, but unfortunately the bird got free. After a few more catches and losses the young boy, Panos, caught him by the tail. A very kind onlooker offered his keys as a lever to get what turned out to be a massive clam shell off the cormorant's beak.

After being examined by a bird of prey handler, it was determined that there was nothing wrong with it, and it was released back into the ocean. All in all, the rescue lasted one and a half hours. We were all glad that it had a happy ending, and hopefully the cormorant will have learnt its lesson too!

A big thanks to all those that helped out in the rescue.

The Adventurous Sea Watch Team
www.seawatchfoundation.org.uk

Don't play with your food!

We’re just over a week into our third period of the season here at the Sea Watch Foundation, and what a week it has been! Our new volunteers arrived on the scene and after finishing an intensive week of training have been let loose in New Quay. A weekend in town was kicked off with a round of Bingo at the Queens, followed by a dedicated survey out on our faithful boat, Dunbar Castle 2. Here our 'Newbies' were introduced to some of our favourite residents in Cardigan Bay, including a couple of Grey Seals and ‘Chris’ a female dolphin who has been sighted here in New Quay for around 20 years! The volunteers headed out for a hike on Saturday evening, walking the coastal path into Aberaeron. The views were magnificent and a cool cider at the finish line made it all the more worth while.

We’ve had some great encounters with Bottlenose dolphins the last few days, with plenty of action happening right off the pier! Our volunteer Helene, snapped some great shots of 'Spike' fish tossing a huge fish – what a naughty dolphin, did his mother never tell him off for playing with his food!



This was the first encounter of 'Spike' this season we've records for this dolphin back to 2001, so it's great to see him again this year.

We were also lucky enough see a curious Grey Seal having a spy on some fish right below the Jetty.



Hopefully the weather will hold out so we can get out on the water again this weekend, maybe heading up to Northern Cardigan Bay to see what animals we can observe, photograph and record as well as enjoying more of the sights of the beautiful Bay.




Sea Watch Team
www.seawatchfoundation.org.uk

Hello, Goodbye

Well the Sea Watch team was as busy as expected entertaining the media last week. We were lucky on Thursday out on our dedicated survey with the Times newspaper reporters on board we had some fantastic bottlenose dolphin encounters near Aberporth. During one encounter two young adults swam alongside the boat eyeing us up and showing off with a fish in one of their mouths. The article in the Times newspaper is expected to feature in this Saturday’s (17/07/2010) edition.



The high sea state on Sunday meant an entertaining morning for the BBC Panorama film crew aboard the Dunbar. Fortunately we had plenty of dolphins feeding in New Quay harbour that morning offering plenty of filming opportunities - saving us the embarrassment of possible sea sickness off shore! The Panorama program on biodiversity is due to be aired over the August bank holiday; we will keep you posted with an exact date.



Its all change this coming weekend as it marks the end of another three month period for many of the Sea Watch Foundation volunteers. Those leaving the project are sad to say farewell to new friends, experiences and of course Cardigan Bay’s resident dolphins. Some of the volunteers are continuing along the road of marine mammal research in projects across the world. Sea Watch would like to thank the volunteers for their hard work over the last period and wish them all the best it’ll be sad to see them go, and offer a warm welcome to the new volunteers arriving on Monday.

Sea Watch Foundation Team
www.seawatchfoundation.org.uk

Bay is Reporters Paradise

Sea Watch Foundation (SWF) has a busy few days ahead entertaining journalists from esteemed Medias.

Tomorrow (Thursday) we will be joined by Simon a journalist from the Times newspaper out on a dedicated survey on board the Dunbar. He’ll be following us to report on our journey as we photograph the bottlenose dolphin population as part of our annual research here in Cardigan Bay.

On Saturday all of the volunteers and staff will be welcoming reporters from the Panorama programme on BBC 1 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/). They will be conducting some interviews and we will go out on Dunbar once again for a dedicated photographic survey. We are very pleased to welcome reporters from Panorama, as this is a great show, which has been running more than fifty years. They are currently gathering reports for a programme about biodiversity, which aims to show its importance/relevance to our lives.

The waters of Cardigan Bay are ones of the least polluted in the UK, and the area hosts two SAC’s (Special Area of Conservation), developed originally to protect the resident population of bottlenose dolphins and harbour porpoise. The Bay constitutes an excellent example of the benefits of efficient protection, it’s rewarding that a quality programme and newspaper will be presenting the role of Sea Watch Foundation in this accomplishment.

Finger’s crossed that we’ll have some nice encounters to provide Simon and the BBC team with some fantastic shots of the dolphins, and us hard at work!

Sea Watch Foundation
www.seawatchfoundation.org.uk