Working at the Skomer Marine Nature Reserve
A scruffy grey Avon Searider cruises in carrying two occupants. They are obviously not dressed for diving, wearing green T-shirts, orange fishermen's overalls and boating lifejackets. The side of the RIB bears the legend “Skomer Marine Nature Reserve”.
“Hello, your boat looks familiar. Can you remind me which club you are from?” opens the dialogue. The conversation develops during which you are skilfully interrogated about the number of divers, how long you are there and where you are diving. Equally skilfully and subtlety you are reminded of the diving and boating rules of the marine reserve. If you are new to the area you will be handed a set of leaflets bearing information about the area and, importantly for divers, details of slack water times round the island.
The crew are Phil Newman and Kate Lock, marine conservation officers for the Skomer Marine Nature Reserve. For many divers this is their only contact with the policing of the reserve, save maybe for watching them come in and out of the beach at Martin's Haven.
But this public contact with visiting divers is only the tip of what is involved. Having been a regular visiting diver for several years, on a busy June weekend I took the opportunity to join Phil and Kate on patrol.
It's a perfect day, so we head straight out to Skomer Island. At North Haven a couple of dive RIBs are tied off to a mooring. These are regular weekend visitors and know the rules. A couple of divers are preparing to do some training exercises in the shallow water of the bay and the others will be diving the wreck of the Lucy later on.
Before leaving the bay we idle across to the landing stage for Skomer Island, so Kate can make a brief diversion ashore and deliver the island's mail.
As we round the Pig Stone at the southwest corner of the island a message comes in on the marine VHF radio. The warden from Skomer Island is out counting birds on the Garland Stone and has found the decaying remains of a turtle.
We retrace our route and locate the turtle. The remains are in a sorry state, barely recognisable if it were not for the shell. Phil and Kate inspect the body for any sign of the cause of death, but nothing is obvious. A section of spine is taken as a means of identifying the precise turtle species and the carcass is left as food for the gulls and fishes.
Back on patrol Kate makes notes of lobster pots left by local fishermen. Phil explains that commercial fishing within the reserve is limited to a few locals who have been running a few pots since long before the reserve was established. We approach the fishing boat to say hello and enquire about the catch. All part of keeping records of what goes on in the marine reserve.
At South Haven a large blue RIB from Pembrokeshire Dive Charters has a tour party on board. Not divers, just tourists out for a trip round the island. We stop to say hello, and Phil and Kate are invited to tell the passengers a bit about the underwater side of the marine reserve.
On the other side of the bay, a line of yachts are tied up to moorings. All part of monitoring the use of the reserve, we drive over to get a count of the number of people on board and record where each yacht is from. It turns out that one lot are well into the G&T's already, and it is only 11 o'clock in the morning.
Our circuit of Skomer is completed by cutting through Little Sound back to the north side of the island. Here we tie off to a marker buoy about 100 metres off shore to collect data for some ongoing projects. Sensors are lowered to measure water temperature, conductivity and salinity at 5 metre depth increments.
Perhaps the most interesting from a diver's point of view is a measurement of visibility. A white disc is lowered into the water until it can no longer be seen. Visibility is measured at 7 metres, above average for the time of year. The best they have ever measured is 11 metres, which probably equates to a couple of metres more than that from a diver's point of view.
The scientific work does not stop at the surface of the sea. A few days later I am on board the NMR hard boat “Skalmey” to join the team on a dive.
Today's task is to measure an area of gorgonian sea fans on the north wall of Skomer. Measurements of sea fan growth is an ongoing project, with several mapped groups of sea fans being surveyed regularly.
The main instruments of the survey are a Nikonos camera system on an aluminium frame and a blackboard with a grid marked on it. The principle is simple; sandwich the sea fan between the frame and the blackboard so as to take a photograph from a known distance against the grid background. Over a series of photographs, growth of an individual sea fan can be measured and any disease or damage detected.
Underwater and in practice it is much more complicated. In addition to the camera frame Kate is also carrying a slate with the site map and record form. She knows the site well and can virtually identify individual sea fans from memory. The camera frame acts like a sail in the gentle current, making it very difficult to manoeuvre into place without harming the sea fans or other marine life.
Once the photograph is taken they rotate round the subject to take it again from the opposite side and Kate records the details. Then it is on to the next subject. There are 11 sea fans on the route, which allows for a few spare shots on a roll of 36 or to continue and survey a second smaller site.
Growth of the sea fans has been measured as less than 5 millimetres per year, so some of the larger fans could easily be getting on for 100 years old. As with diving a coral reef, divers should take care not to damage or break them.
Back on the beach at Martin's Haven Kate takes time to talk to each group of divers, again recording data and informing about the marine reserve, but also more than helpful to answer any questions about diving conditions, dive sites and marine life.
Visiting divers can also help. Simple things like recording numbers of divers, sites dived and a few basic observations are easy enough for any group of divers to complete. Organising a beach cleanup between dives is something else that requires no training, and during dives you can collect lost fishing line, weights and other submerged litter.
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