Sea Doggos

Tag! You’re it!

There was a sharp tug on my fin and I turned around to catch the cheeky seal diving off into the distance, pretending it wasn’t him.

This never-ending game of ‘tag’ is a favourite of the seals in the Farne Islands, Northumberland.

Around August time they get quite playful. Global Underwater Explorers UK had a group trip going and on this rare occasion, Rich and I were both free.

I needed to keep my skills up with my rebreather so took it along with me, interested to see what the seals made of the bubbleless, silent machine.

After two days of boat diving, Rich took me on a shore dive from St Abbs. I had never dived here and seized the opportunity to do some SeaSearch recording, something that had completely transformed by sea diving.

The underwater scenery was simply stunning.

There were kelp forests and steep gulleys, adorned with fluffy dead men’s fingers and corals.

Nosey, territorial Ballan Wrasse pestered us and we dived through the most beautiful natural rock archway.

We had lunch in a café in the harbour and dive 2 was equally as stunning. British sea diving on a good day is as good as anywhere in Europe and I enjoyed filming with the new Paralenz Dive Camera.

Conger Conger

I've been trying to get to grips with some scientific names for various marine critters. They tend to be formed from genus, species and sometimes order and class.

The easiest one to remember is 'Conger Conger'. Not very imaginative and I guess, in a class of it's own.

This one in Lyme Regis, Dorset was in a cage of it's own.

It had got itself trapped in a large, lost fishing pot, doubtless looking for an easy meal. A spider crab cowered nervously in the corner and the eel was stuck fast through the netting, unable to go forward or back with no chance of escape.

The charity Ghost Fishing UK had been tipped off about two lost pots which had got their lines tangled up in an old diving shot line and subsequently snapped off, abandoning them on the seabed.

Now, both the shot line and the lost pots were threatening unwitting wildlife.

As part of a 5-day marathon effort by the charity and its volunteers, not aided by Covid-19 restrictions and ever changing legislation, a team of 6 divers set out from Lyme Regis to dive the Heroine. Consisting mainly of brick cargo and conger eels, this fairly flat wreck had snagged both a shot line and string of pots, the latter laying hopelessly on the seabed just next to the wreck.

I was on the camera again, using my new Canon 100D and Ikelite housing set up, with Ikelite strobes and snapped some shots of Andy Rath collecting up the old shot rope, made mostly from polyprop. Floating neutrally buoyant, it was a very real hazard for divers, cetaceans and boat propellers alike.

Once removed, the pots eluded us until the other team jumped in to join us. It wasn’t long before we found a large, lost cage just off the wreck and stuck fast, a resident conger eel.

The pots had been there an estimated week or so. The conger wasn’t in bad condition and his cellmate, a nervous spider crab, cowered in the corner, trying hard not to be his next lunch.

I got in close and set about the camera.

Scuba divers are the eyes of the ocean and without underwater images and video, the public remains completely unaware of what is going on beneath the waves. How can anyone care about something they cannot even see or simply just don’t know about?

Satisfied with my images, Fred gave me an OK question signal to which I replied ‘OK’ I was done.

I did not expect what happened next, as Fred immediately opened the lid of the cage!

I screamed through my regulator, climbed over Andy leaving him confused and dishevelled and hid well out of the way, expecting the conger to sense freedom and set about immediately biting me.

Of course, nothing of the sort happened. Fred spent the next 5 minutes trying everything he could to get the conger out of the cage.

He tipped it on its side, shook it about, cut away some of the net which the conger was ensnared in and even tried to remove it by its tail. He wouldn’t budge.

Eventually, after more persuasion the conger slipped slowly and unceremoniously out of the cage and swam nonchalantly off along the sand to head back to his lair in the piles of bricks.

The grateful spider crab also made a break for it at a significantly quicker pace and the team set about raising the pots to the surface.

The pots were returned to their owners in an attempt to work up relationships with the local fishing community. Without their trust, we will not be able to get information where fishing gear has been lost and won’t stand a hope of recovering it before it does untold, wasteful damage.

Lockdown Litter - Time to take a stand?

"Do you think that's cider?"

I asked my next door neighbour, Redd, as we poked through the brambles on the side of the road with our litter pickers.

It was a cold, slightly windy and very dull grey day. We were in the middle of the longest lock down ever and so utterly bored and fed up that we decided to start cycling.

It was during our tentative, lung bursting wobbles around the village that we were both noticing horrendous amounts of litter.

“Mate…that’s not cider….”

I did wonder. I mean, why would you drink some of it and then put the lid back on the 1 litre plastic bottle, then chuck it in the hedge?

How naïve. I’m a Paramedic as well, so the smell as I emptied it should have been a clue.

Just gross.

Turns out, the lorry drivers that have been visiting the village industrial estate have been parking up for the night or for a few hours to take their rest periods - and without toilet facilities, have been peeing in bottles and chucking them into our hedgerows.

Single use face masks. The latest scourge. Once in our drains, they are in our waterways and cause blockages - the least of our concerns.

A new blight was also noticeable, mostly within a short range of our village ‘hub’ the Co-Op convenience store. This seemed to be the final resting place for 15 of the 31 single use face masks we found.

According to the Marine Conservation Society’s Great British Beach Clean 2020 results, Personal protective Equipment (PPE) was significantly increased.

Face masks and gloves were found on almost 30% of beaches during the clean-up. The Source to Sea Litter Quest data showed that more than two thirds (69%) of litter picks finding PPE items such as masks and gloves.

Further down the road, drinks bottles, food containers, takeaway cartons and even full bags of litter thrown from car windows increased in quantity and density.

In one gateway, a pile of plastics had accumulated at the pinch point of a stream, right next to a field where cows were grazing. In another, piles of empty Carling cans densely filled one hedgerow. Someone had clearly had a fun drinking session here, but not only did they forget to take their cans away - they also left the 4-pack plastic yokes behind. Three of them.

Uncut, these can cause horrific injuries to wildlife.

Some companies are now making these yokes not only degradable but edible! Carling claim to have got rid of the plastic yokes but a quick visit to the village Co-Op showed a very different story. There was the puppy - and the poo.

Talking of poo….Redd is a dog owner and is incensed by other dog owners who leave their dog turds lying around on pavements and other people’s driveways. It isn’t surprising either, as the village has several escapees who wander the village by themselves. Presumably the owners neither know nor care.

We recovered over 750 items of litter in just under 4 hours.

Some hero.......Argos - what are you thinking?

At the beginning of February, I embarked on a National Geographic educator course called ‘Collecting Data to Explore Plastic Pollution in Our Communities’. It ties in quite nicely with the data collection work I am doing for the charity I run called Ghost Fishing UK.

Through this course I’ve learned how to create some very powerful and visual results. We did another one in the village on 14th February, just 20 minutes as per the Nat Geo course task.

In just 20 minutes we collected 116 pieces of litter!

If you are interested in doing litter picks, whether in the area you live your favourite beauty spot or on the beach, here are some handy tips to get you started.

Protect Yourself - Use PPE.

Make sure you use gloves and get yourself a litter picker. I definitely recommend a bag hoop to keep your bag open, especially on a windy day.

Get written consent from anyone you take a photo of (you don’t legally need it, but you may with children if you plan on publishing) and complete an easy risk assessment form (Example risk assessment form).

Wear high vizibility jackets, wrap up warm and make sure your phone is full charged.

Data Collection

There are several data collection tools out there - I would argue far too many, as this means all the data is collected differently by different people and there is no standardisation and no central database.

So, it is up to you where you hang your flag and what you use.

Here are some suggestions:

Marine Debris Tracker app

Set up a free account and you can download the data from the CSV file on their website.

This can be imported into Google Earth (instructions below).

Simply choose the list (begin with NOAA if you are new to it, but the Nat Geo list is very comprehensive) and tap on the item of litter each time you bag it. The app follows your route and will drop a pin on a map each time you log a piece of litter.

This is a very powerful tool for collecting geospacial data and provides evidence of litter ‘hotspots’.

To get the map, screen grab the plotted map BEFORE you submit your data

or you won’t be able to get it back!

The app generates some cool graphics which can be screen grabbed from the website.

To make a cool Google Earth KML file, follow these instructions:

1. Go to the Marine Debris Tracker website and download the CSV for your litter pick.

2. Open Google Earth on your computer

3. On your computer, open Google Earth Pro.

4. Click File > Import.

5. Browse to the location of the CSV file and open it.

6. In the box that appears, next to Field Type, choose Delimited.

7. Next to Delimited, choose Comma.

8. Use the preview pane to ensure your data has imported correctly and click Next.

9. Next to "This dataset does not contain latitude/longitude information," leave the box unchecked.

10. Select the fields in your spreadsheet that contain the latitude and longitude data and click Next.

11. Click Finish. Google Earth begins geocoding your data.

12. To use a style template, click Yes.

13. Click OK.

14. Create a new style template, or use a previously generated template.

You should now have all the items you collected, following the path you took. You can also draw a route and measure it using the rule tool in Google Earth, as I have done with the red line here.

Another very cool feature is that you can add images to the litter points to show photos of what was found, where and when.

You can also share your KML file so others can look at your Google Earth litter pick route and see what you found and where.

Village Litter Pick KML 14022021.kmz

Download KMZ • 20.39MB

If you prefer good old paper and pen, then the Marine Conservation Society survey sheet is more than adequate and works fine for inland litter picks as well as beach cleans.

When completed, fill out a summary sheet. Don’t submit it to MCS though unless it was actually done on a beach.

You can track your route and progress using an exercise app such as Strava.

Keep Scotland Beautiful also has a handy survey form. I could not find one for England so please let me know if you come across one.

At the end, I produce a summary sheet along with images as an ‘evidence pack’ and send it to whoever I think will listen. Parish Council, District Council, local papers, local social media - anywhere you think will make people wake up and listen.

Why not let us know how you get on. Have you done a beach clean or litter pick recently? How did it go and what did you find? Where did you send the results?

We would love to hear from you!

Our Village litter pick gallery. A huge thank you to Redd Moon for her company, enthusiasm and bravery in these litter picks!

Autumn Atlantis

Autumn saw my final trip of 2019 on the Atlantis. The divers were working a little shallower and I had a reasonably quiet trip. We were treated to some stunning sunsets and the views from my cabin were pretty cool too.

View from my cabin in the south north sea.

I was very happy to be invited to talk at the Birmingham dive show yet again. I'm lucky to have such a wide range of topics to talk on.

Last year I talked about my cave diving exploration project but this year I was able to talk on Ghost Fishing.

This was doubly exciting as Ghost Fishing UK had a stand at the dive show for the first time and it was definitely the best thing we had ever done in terms of outreach.

We raised a huge amount of cash for the charity and all the volunteers on the stand, working for free all weekend, were flat out from the second the doors opened.

My talks on the Diver stage were packed, especially Sunday which was several layers deep in standing room only.

There is clearly an appetite for divers to help the aquatic environment and we are very happy to provide them with a pathway to making a real difference.

Boka Atlantis. Image: Christine Grosart