Rescuing Ballan Wrasses and encountering gully-dwelling squat lobsters has fuelled COAST diver Claire Youdale’s passion for documenting the diversity of Lamlash Bay. Below is her account of Seasearch survey training at the Marine Quest facilities in Eyemouth.

I recently journeyed to Eyemouth on the East Coast of Scotland,  to take part in a Seasearch Surveyor Course organised and run by Carrie Pillow and Paula Lightfoot of Seasearch North East and Calum Duncan of the Marine Conservation Society (MCS).

Seasearch is a project for volunteer sport divers to take records of the marine animals and habitats they see, to build of an underwater map of the types of seabed around the UK. This data helps to recognise the richest areas for marine life, sites that need protection and any areas where there are problems, areas like Lamlash Bay with its maerl beds.

Maerl is a very slow growing hard seaweed which forms in piles and can be up to 30m deep. Its many nooks and crannies are an important nursery zone for many species including King and Queen Scallops. It was the identification of this habitat by completing Seasearch surveys that helped to bring about the current No Take Zone.
On completion of this course I will be able to conduct more Seasearch Surveys of the bay and learn more about the habitats found there.

The course was based at Marine Quest in Eyemouth which has fantastic accommodation and dive facilities. The first day was an introduction to Seasearch by Carrie Pillow and how to fill in the Survey forms. The forms record the seabed type, the number of different habitats, the species seen on the dive and how abundant they are to be entered onto a national database. Calum Duncan gave a talk on the importance of Seasearch and used the Lamlash No Take Zone as an example where Seasearch Surveys had directly influenced political decisions.
Once we'd all got to grips with the form we did a virtual dive from a DVD before getting kitted up to hit the water. The high attendance of the weekend meant we were split into two groups with half diving off the Marine Quest boat and half going on a shore dive at Lizard Point.

My first dive was off the boat and, despite some bikini-strap-getting-caught-in-my-neck-seal trouble, the dive was fantastic. Just around the coast from Eyemouth Harbour the rocks drop off steeply to a boulder-strewn seabed covered with dead mans fingers (a colonial sea squirt). Wrasse lurked around the boulders and my sharp-eyed buddy spotted a nudibranch (a sea slug) laying spiral eggs under a rock. We even rescued a Ballan Wrasse tangled up in a discarded fishing line.

Back at Marine Quest forms were filled out and the number of habitats argued over before retreating to a local restaurant for some well-earned dinner.

Bad weather was forecast for later in the second day so after a lovely cooked breakfast the half of the group on the boat headed off and the rest of us went further around the coast to a shore dive off Lizard point. It was a very different dive to the day before with a kelp forest leading into a gully with lobsters and squat lobsters guarding many of the crevices and many of brittlestars waving their arms out of cracks in the wall to catch passing plankton. As it was quite a narrow gully everywhere you turned there was another diver looking intently at the seaweed or the rock walls and scribbling furiously onto an underwater slate.

Once back on dry land, Paula Lightfoot gave a talk on the species likely to be encountered around the UK and those of especial importance, like the Northern Sea-fan and the angler fish (or monkfish).

Forms were filled out and verified and happy but tired everyone headed off back to the various bits of the UK they call home.

It was a very busy but incredibly informative weekend and I now feel much better prepared to continue surveying Lamlash Bay and document what an incredibly diverse place it is.