Assault on ghost gear!

Cornwall College’s Charity Spring Fair was held at their Newquay Campus today! Students Catherine, Emily, Jade, Joe and Kaitlin had organised fundraising action in aid of CSGRT!

Top highlight was an assault course with a difference! Designed to show everyone what it might be like to be a seal negotiating its way around ghost gear in our oceans, the students had collected a range of lost fishing gear off local beaches and arranged it into a series of hazards for competitors. After a dizzying and disorientating 10 second spin at the start line, participants had to slalom fishing buoys and leap over a lobster pot before ‘swimming’ under a large piece of trawl net and racing to the finish line!

Ghost gear assault course

CSGRT stall

Everyone found the last obstacle the hardest as the trawl net was very tangly, so it was easy to see the difficulties that this poses for seals in the wild. In fact before being recycled for the assault course, the 9m long net had actually entangled a real seal rescued by British Divers Marine Life Rescue on 24/12/14. The creative and relevant idea of this activity won the students high praise from their external examiner.

CSGRT team – Emily, Jade, Joe, Sue, Catherine and Kaitlin

Beautiful and yummy sealy cup cakes

Other fundraising activities included a stall, tombola, raffle, face painting and home made sealy cakes!

Awesome marine inspired face painting

The students’ tremendous hard work on the event raised CSGRT a whopping £109.59 towards our marine life boat survey appeal!

Massive thanks to all the students who helped to make this such a successful event and to their families, Cornwall College staff, CSGRT members and everyone else who turned up to support the event.

Well done for such an enjoyable and inspiring day!