TORPEDO 25
July 1998

Electronic News Service

 British Marine Life Study Society Information Page  

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The British Marine Life Study Society has been included as an Encylopaedia Britannica ** Recommended Site and included on the BBC On-line Internet Guide.

Some events are grouped under the organiser and this messes up the strict chronological order.
Scroll down the page to have a look.

Helford VMCA Diary 1998

Field Trips on:

26 July "Helford River Wildlife"
 9 August "Secrets of the Shore"  at Gillan Harbour.

Ring Pamela Tompsett  Tel:  01269 842316  or  01872 273939 for more details.
Pamela Tompsett   EMail petomp@cornwt.demon.co.uk

(BMLSS file:  Black 67) 

22 August. (Saturday). Foreness and Botany Bay, Margate.  Meet east end of Palm Bay Avenue.
 6.00 pm.  Rock pools and wave-cut chalk platform.

8 November (Sunday).  Seasalter. Meet at Blue Anchor Corner TR 082 650.
 8.30 AM.  Mud flats and clay shore, tiles and mussel beds.

All enthusiasts welcome.

Contact:  Ian Tittley  EMail

(BMLSS file:  Black 67) 

Wembury Bay  Rockpool Rambles
Contact  Wembury Marine Centre  Tel:  01752 862538

Leaflet from Devon Wildlife Trust  Tel:  01392 279244.

Low Tide Events
Sussex and France

RORE

Contact  Clive Pepe, Tel: 01273 234032
EMail  rore@gn.apc.org

LifeScience 2000

Contact: David Slingsby 01924 378608
LifeScience 2000 Web Site

Changes in the Marine Flora of the North Sea

Centre for Environmental Research into Coastal Issues (CERCI)

The full programme of events is now available.   (Glaucus ref:  Blue Folder)
Mary Barry EMail maryb@ucscarb.ac.uk

Mineral & Fossil Fair
          Dorset Geologists' Association Group
          Allendale Centre, Wimborne, Dorset.

          Adults £1  Children free.

Dr Martin Angel, the Buckland Professor for 1998, will give public lectures on the topic of

“The Deep-Ocean: Use and Misuse”

on Monday, 7 September at 19.30 h within the programme of Oceanography 98 at
Southampton Oceanography Centre

on Wednesday, 9 September at 16.50 h within the programme of the
1998 BAAS meeting in Cardiff

and on Thursday, 29 October at 15.30 h at the University of Stirling

Each of these sessions is open to any member of the public without charge.

For more details of the three lectures please contact John Ramster, the Clerk to the Buckland Foundation via jramster@lineone.net or phone/fax UK: 01505  615402
or by post at 3 Woodside Avenue, Bridge of Weir.  PA11 3PQ.

 UK OCEANOGRAPHY 98

 7-11 September 1998
 Southampton Oceanography Centre

 EMail: ukoc98@soc.soton.ac.uk
 EMail for the Challenger Society  jxj@soc.soton.ac.uk

 UK Oceanography Web Site

MARINE WILDLIFE NEWS

• Bournemouth Oceanarium
• White-beaked Dolphins
• Basking Sharks
• Hippolyte longirostris
• New Plymouth Aquarium
• Harbour Porpoises
• Lobster
• Humpback Whale
• Killer Whale
• Sussex Dolphins

                     3 July 1998.  Bournemouth Oceanarium opened to the public.
                     The centrepiece display is a re-creation of the Great Barrier Reef, but there
                     are displays from seas all around the world, including the British Isles and an Antarctic
                     Ice Shelf display.
                     Contact:  Nikki Hasell  Tel: 01202 311993

• 13 June 1998. Several hundred White-beaked Dolphins, Lagenorhynchus albirostris, were seen off Sumburgh Head, Shetland Isles, during the early afternoon.
•  
• Basking Sharks
• Cetorhinus maximus
          Report by Colin Speedie (Cornish Wildlife Trust)
•  In May 1998 literally hundreds of Basking Sharks were seen off the Lizard Peninsula, southern Cornwall.
          From the vantage point of the high cliffs the whole sea was
          covered with sharks from close inshore to  the horizon.

          The sharks first arrived about 12 May 1998, and a few
          days later their numbers were estimated to exceeded 200.

• They were still around at the beginning of June.
          Shark Trust  Basking Shark  Web Page:
          http://ds.dial.pipex.com/sharktrust/basking.htm

          16 May 1998Jon Makeham discovered 20 specimens of the Mediterranean prawn
          Hippolyte longirostris at Hannafore Point, Looe. This species has only been
          recorded twice before in Britain.
 

• 6 May:  The New National Aquarium at Plymouth is opened to the public.
          The Aquarium covers an area of 9000 square metres in the
          New Sutton Harbour area of Plymouth near the historic
          Barbican.

          Contact:  Simon Bradley  Tel:  01752 600301
          The display includes sharks, seahorses, and NE Atlantic
          marine fauna in a natural kelp tank.
          The wave tank is unique to British Public Aquaria.

          The old MBA Laboratory Aquarium on Citadel Hill is now
          closed to the public.
          A list of Public Aquaria in the U.K. can be found at:

• pan2.htm
•  
• 29 April: Hundreds of Harbour Porpoises, Phocoena phocoena, are seen  off Sumburgh Head. There were so many that they filled the sea in all directions.
•  
• 23 April. A Lobster with a deformed claw (an extra claw appended) was caught by fisherman Chris Mowlem in Poole Harbour and put on display at Weymouth Sea Life Centre.
• Crustacea: explanation of freak claws.
• Picture of freak claw from Brighton.
•  
• 19 April.  The first Humpback Whale, Megaptera novaeangliae, sighting of the year for the Shetland Isles is reported off Sumburgh Head with 6 White-sided Dolphins, Lagenorhynchus acutus.
• Shetland News Web Site
•  
• 19 April. A bull Killer Whale, Orcinus orca, is seen off Haroldswick, Unst, Shetland Isles.
•  
• 19 April. A large Turbot (large for the Eastern Channel) of 8.7 kg (19 lb 2 oz) was caught by Robert Squires from an angling boat off Southwick, Sussex.
•  
15 April. A Tornado is caught on film off the coast of Fraserburgh, NE Scotland, as the rest of the country suffers a cold spell, with snow and temperatures in the whole of the UK down to freezing point at night.
 



Illustration by Chris Hicks (Northolt)




2 April:  3 Bottle-nosed Dolphins, Tursiops trucatus, were seen by Chris Everson about three and a half miles south-west of Littlehampton, Sussex. Cetacean sightings are infrequent off the Sussex coast. They do not occur every year and dolphins have returned after an absence.

 
Contents

The Environment Council
212 High Holborn
London
WCIV 7VW

EMail: environment.council@ukonline.co.uk

POPULAR PUBLICATIONS

Andy Horton spends a year examining the biology and behaviour of the rock pool fish and other marine life. Click on the titles to access the web sites.

          25 April 1998
          Weekend Telegraph.
          You 'orrible little shellfish
          Ormering in Guernsey.
          Ormer Report

NEW BOOKS

• SEALS & SEALIONS
• by David Miller
• Colin Baxter Photography 1998
• ISBN  1-900455-46-3

BOOK REVIEWS

          Collins
          WHALES & DOLPHINS
          by Mark Carwardine, Erich Hoyt, R. Ewan Fordyce, Peter Gill
          HarperCollins 1998
          RRP £17.99
          ISBN 0-00-220105
 

The amount of accurate information packed into its 288 pages is astounding and it is a very good book to read to get informed about whales, dolphins and porpoises throughout the world. Most, but not all, of the world's species are included in the identification guide that shows colour photographs of every featured species, which should be very helpful in the tricky job of identifying them. The Harbor Porpoise, Phocoena phocoena, shows only the fins in a very small photograph, but most of photographs show the whole mammal, or in the case of the large whales a substantial proportion.

The strong point of the book is the general information on the whales and dolphins and the undersea
world in which they live, including conservation issues, high-tech. research (including DNA
fingerprinting), the mystery of strandings, social behaviour, conservation issues, evolution and much
more. There is a chapter by Eric Hoyt of where to go to see the big whales and a bibliography and list of organisations.

Mark Carwardine is well known as an expert on cetaceans and is excellent standard of writing is
maintained in this useful book.

          SEASONS OF THE WHALE
          by Erich Hoyt
          Whale & Dolphin Conservation Society 1998
          ISBN 1-901386-03-1
 

          There is lots of interesting information in this 100 page glossy paperback and I
          know from my experience from enquiries that this book will answer many of
          the questions asked. The subject matter can be found in the index.

          However, the account  reads more like a novel than a text book following the
          whales on their annual migrations. Almost every page has some of the best
          whales photographs I have seen in a book. After man has stopped the
          wholesale extermination of whales, they are still threatened extensively by
          pollution and discarded fishing gear, and throughout the book these issues are
          explained in a way that promotes greater understanding rather than a scare
          story. There are some vivid descriptions of the behaviour of particular animals;
          one example worth looking at in the book shop is the second paragraph on page
          46 beginning "Tail flukes moving up and down ."  which is really quite
         cleverly written.

          This is a classic book for all whale watchers and therefore should also appeal
          to all fish watchers.
 

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GATEWAY: NEW LINKS TO OTHER SITES

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