Featured image (above) credit: Mono
Written by Sean Nelson
Here at MarineWatch, the Penryn Campus’ society for all things marine, we’ve had a great and very busy year! We’ve run events every single week since Welcome Week and hopefully brought some marine-y fun to everyone who has come along to our events. Our society has traditionally focused on boat trips, shorewatches and rockpooling, collecting data to use towards local sightings databases such as Cornwall Wildlife Trust. We wanted to continue this data-driven approach this year, but also broaden our events to build a greater community feel and provide a good way for our members to get to know each other over shared interests and a love for the oceans. We hope we did a good job – here are a few highlights of our year!
Boat Trips
We’ve organised 16 boat trips this year, using 3 different operators and with some really great trips when the weather cooperated! Highlights were definitely a breaching pod of risso’s dolphins on two trips in May, bow-riding common dolphins in early Spring, along with countless seals and seabirds – including a puffin! We’ve also held 2 marine mammal and seabird identification courses in collaboration with MARINElife and AK Wildlife Cruises, with 55 members completing the course. A big thank you to Rick Morris for coming down to deliver the sessions and to everyone who bought tickets and made them possible. We’re hoping to do lots more boat trips, hopefully including some survey work, next year and continue getting our members out on the water while contributing to sightings datasets.
Collaborations
We’ve teamed up with lots of different societies and organisations this year to deliver some great events. In January, we welcomed the University of Plymouth’s Marine Biology Society down to Falmouth, hosting them for an action-packed day full of shorewatching (with dolphins!), rockpooling, guest speaker talks, and a pub quiz to round off. We joined Expedition Society on a walk to Mutton Cove to spy the hauled-out seals, have held beach cleans with Life’s a Beach, and shorewatches with Falmouth Marine Conservation throughout the year. We hosted Francesca Trotman, founder of Love the Oceans, for a great talk on her organisation’s conservation efforts in Mozambique, and have used the Seaquest Southwest methodology to send data back to the Cornwall Wildlife Trust from our shorewatches.
Other Events
We tried to diversify our events this year to get as many people as involved as possible with our society. We held multiple seaglass crafting sessions which saw amazing turnouts – lots of our members put our committee to shame with their crafting skills! We also organised a day trip to Watergate Bay to try and find ‘Surfrider’ – the humpback whale that had been making daily appearances near Newquay in February. Turnout was incredible and it was a beautiful day, but typically the whale decided not to show up for the first time in several weeks on that day! Our UV rockpooling events saw over 50 attendees with lots of fun finds, and our sea swims and snorkels throughout the year went very well, if just a bit cold. Our ‘Big Shorewatch’ had groups going out across Cornwall to record sightings in March, with dolphins seen at Godrevy, lots of diving gannets at St Agnes and lots of seals at Lizard Point.
We can’t forget all of our pub quizzes and socials throughout the year too. Hopefully they were great opportunities to meet new people at the start of the year, and that all of our members are now experts on marine trivia.
A massive thank you to everyone who has come along to any of our events. With over 250 paying members, it’s been an amazing year for our society. A huge thank you also needs to go to Exeter Marine, who have provided us with publicity, support and funding for the past few years. It is thanks to them that we are able to subsidise our boat trips and training sessions, and keep running as many free events as we do.
Our committee this year has been amazing, dedicating so much time towards the society and so thank you to everyone.
- Co-Presidents: Nicole Yucel, Sean Nelson
- Publicity Officer: Beth Bandy
- Trips and Data Officers: Tainn Clowes-Michael, Ed Ashmore-Wells
- First Year Rep: Rosie Currell
- General Committee: Eliza Edwards
- Masters Rep: Caitlin Turner
Hopefully SU MarineWatch will hold even bigger and better things next year, and we look forward to seeing lots of you back at our events.
SU MarineWatch is one of Falmouth & Exeter Students’ Union societies. To find out more about SU MarineWatch and how you can join, visit The SU website.