Ranger Roundup - Week 4

Welcome to our new blog! Each week, our Summer Rangers Anj, Finn and Becca will be providing a roundup of all that's happening at the BMR. Read on to find out more about the new rangers and what they have been up to in their fourth week.

Marine Education Centre on Tour - Pease Bay

Week 3 of our tour took us to the hidden gem of Pease Bay. This picturesque beach is tucked away in a valley, and we set up our MEC right on the beachfront with lovely, calming views. What an ideal location for talking about our local marine environment.

We had the pleasure of speaking to many visitors and locals who had come to the beach for the day. Many a frequent visitor spoke to us about an infamous local... a grey seal that follows dog walkers up and down the beach, we wondered if it just wants to make some new friends?

Just as we finished packing up, we were spoiled by a large pod of bottlenose dolphins heading south. Every direction we looked, they were jumping, splashing and feeding. What a wonderful thank you from our marine environment!

Beach Clean/Scavenger Hunt

Thursday morning we held a scavenger hunt and coastal clean up at Pease Bay! We were joined by an amazing team of 20 locals and holidaymakers, and together we managed to clean up Pease Bay. The kids did a fantastic job of completing their scavenger hunts as well as helping us collect loads of litter from the beach - even finding random items like a tub of slime. Overall, we filled a couple of bin bags weighing a total of 1.29kg! A huge thank you to everyone who came along to help!

Intertidal Marine Monitoring

On Friday morning, as part of the BMR’s regular Intertidal Marine Monitoring project, we headed down to St Abbs harbour to monitor the rocky shore, adding to our growing dataset that allows us to understand the changes in species present between the seasons and years. We were joined by 6 wonderful volunteers, including 3 volunteers from St Abbs Marine Station. We found an amazing array of life, including butterfish, porcelain crabs, and lots of periwinkles!

National Whale & Dolphin Watch Week

On Sunday, we held a whale and dolphin watch at Coldingham Bay alongside the National Trust for Scotland as part of National Whale and Dolphin Watch Week, a citizen science event set up by the Seawatch Foundation to help understand the distribution of whales and dolphins around the UK coastline! We engaged with just over 40 members of the public, who all lent a hand and helped us search for cetaceans. We were lucky enough to see several harbour porpoises and one bottlenose dolphin feeding in front of us!! Another whale and dolphin watch event will be happening at the St Abbs lighthouse on Sunday, 3rd August. Come along to see what the BMR has to offer!

Coldingham Gala

What a day we had at the Coldingham Gala! We brought along a mini version of our Marine Education Centre (MEC) to give locals and people from afar a peek into the underwater wonders of their very own Marine Reserve. We were buzzing all day with curious visitors asking questions, sharing stories, and diving into marine life facts (not literally... although we wouldn’t have blamed them on such a sunny day!).

And let’s not forget our furry fans. This week, we officially decided to include dogs in our visitor count, let’s face it, they’ve been just as interested (and possibly more enthusiastic) about ocean conservation as their humans. We were also lucky enough to have our gazebo set up right next to a fantastic dog charity that was hosting a series of fun dog competitions, from a “most waggy tail” competition to “sausage eating”. The day was such a vibe!

Thank you to everyone who came along to any of our events this week! It's been totally smashing. We can’t wait to see what next week has in store for us!