SWMEC 2016

One of the highlights in the SW marine conservation calendar year is the SW Marine Ecosystem Conference held at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

This event aims to promote networking across relevant organisations, summarise the previous year’s marine events and explore emerging research to inform the management of our precious SW marine ecosystems.

Organised by Bob Earll, this year’s conference proved a huge success with a variety of speakers on wide ranging topics with oversubscribed attendance.

CSGRT participated in three of the talks ‘South coast Devon and Dorset seal network’; ‘SW bottlenose dolphin network’ as well as delivering the ‘world premiere’ of our World Animal Protection commissioned report on ‘Ghost gear in Cornwall 2014/15’.

The talks described CSGRT’s support to extend seal photo ID into south Devon and Dorset and the successes already achieved; CSGRT’s BND photo ID catalogue originally developed with Dr Matthew Witt and Dr Lucy Hawkes from the University of Exeter’s Penryn Campus, as well as summarising the results of our year of ghost gear research across Cornwall and Devon.

CSGRT featured in numerous tweets of the event! These photos (below) were taken by Dr Lucy Hawkes during the event!

Left: Sarah Hodgson (Dorset Wildlife Trust); Bob Earll (Devon and conference organiser) with Sue Sayer delivering their seal talk

Right: Sue Sayer and Kate Williams (CSGRT) presenting about ghost gear in Cornwall.

CSGRT would like to thank all our amazing volunteers who contributed to the research findings we presented!

(Banner photo at top: Dr Keith Hiscock talking about last year’s conference report for 2014.)