Seasearch, which is coordinated by the Marine Conservation Society, is a project for volunteer sports divers who want to protect the marine environment around Britain and Ireland. The aim is to map out the various types of seabed found in the near-shore zone around the coastline.

Chris Wood, the National Seasearch Coordinator, says most of the data collected came from sites around England, but there was also a record number of data sheets from Ireland and Scotland.

“Most of the information gathered from England came from the south-west, but local Seasearch organisers also received valuable information from less well dived areas in the east , including a record amount of data from Norfolk and Suffolk.

Divers visited North Rona and Sula Sgeir, the UK’s most isolated islands, lying 45 nautical miles north-west from the nearest land at Cape Wrath. Seasearch also dived many other unrecorded sites, some of them targeted dives using sidescan data to pinpoint potentially interesting areas for marine life.

An extensive chalk reef was discovered off North Norfolk, which was especially significant as chalk reefs are one of the features being considered as marine conservation zones in England at the present time. Seasearch data has been in great demand by the four conservation project teams* around the UK and is one of the few datasets that provides hands on evidence of special habitats and features.”

Chris Wood says the number of surprising discoveries made by divers never ceases to amaze: “One of the rarest sea anemones was recorded at Rathlin Island in Northern Ireland. It’s a burrowing sea anemone known only by its scientific name, Aracnanthus sarsi, which is believed to have been badly impacted by trawling over the muddy sand seabeds in which it lives.

Seasearch divers have also been making special efforts to record the present population of crawfish (or crayfish) This large relative of the lobster has been badly affected by tangle netting and hand collection. The population is both small and widely distributed and in Wales divers have been asked to go back through their personal records to try to compare historic populations with the current ones.”

Dives have also revealed how protection brings recovery. Seasearch visited sites in Lyme Bay on the south coast of England where a ban on bottom trawling came into effect in August 2008. Two years on data has shown that the seabed is re-generating with many new pink sea fans, branching sponges, sea squirts and other attached marine life seen at a number of previously trawled and damaged sites.

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