CONSERVATION ISSUES - JANUARY 2005

The County's Emergency Planning Department carried out trials of a new shallow water oil recovery technique in November last year. In partnership with Falmouth Harbour Commissioners they carried out a practical experiment of a new type of booming off Trefusis Point, Falmouth. The significant advance of this new booming technique involves recovering oil from the water.s surface rather than deflecting it onto the land for collection by manual means. The old method of recovering spilt oil at sea used booms to push the oil onto the land. A potentially valuable commodity was thereby rendered useless and the amount of waste was bulked up by sand, shingle etc making the disposal problem almost insurmountable. Worst still this process caused damage to wildlife, coastlines and beaches. The new technique is quite tricky to achieve as it involves booms accurately placed in a V - shape to guide the oil to a collection point where it can be recovered with only a small amount of contamination and even possibly made use of Commercially. The process is much kinder to the environment and minimises waste of an expensive Commodity. The aim of the exercise was to test the new technique before making the information available to our European partners.

A Westcountry MEP, Caroline Jackson, is calling for a European Commission study into the impact of naval sonar on the marine environment, in particular on dolphins and other cetaceans. There have been mass stranding of whales and dolphins in various places around the world when naval exercises using sonar have been taking place. There was a mass stranding on the south coast of Australia during naval sonar exercises and another on the Canary Islands in September 2003, and the Spanish Navy called the exercise off when a large number of beaked whales started stranding themselves. The Federal Court in America has also ruled against the US Navy who wanted to deploy its new high intensity sonar system which would blast 100s of square miles of ocean with noise so intense it could maim, deafen or even kill whales or dolphins. Some Scientists believe sonar may cause bubbles in the animals tissues in much the same way that divers can suffer from decompression sickness known as the .Bends. but I think another possibility is that the noise is so intense that the animals surface too quickly to get away from it, and suffer from the bends in the same way that we do.

Sightings of Bottlenose Dolphins were reported every month except April and November last year, but unidentified small pods of dolphins seen close inshore during those months were probably also Bottlenose so it looks as if they were around our coast all of last year. Harbour Porpoises were reported every month, and this is very encouraging for previously they were rarely reported, probably because they are much more difficult to spot, but now with watchers becoming more experienced we are getting regular sightings, and in any case they seem to be making a comeback. Common Dolphins, in much larger pods, were seen in 8 of the twelve months and Rissos Dolphins in 5 of the months. White Beaked Dolphins were also reported twice during the year. Killer Whales were reported in 4 of the months and Pilot and Minke Whales in 5 of the months. Ocean Sunfish were around from April until September and Basking Sharks from April until August, although quite a large pod were off Guernsey during February. Leatherback Turtles were seen in February , July and August and the most unusual visitor was a Harp Seal which usually lives in the Arctic Ocean. The well known Bottlenose, Benty, has not been reported since September 2003 so perhaps he has died, but another death of a Bottlenose has surprised us, for one found at Gwithian on December 27th was heavily scarred with fresh .Rake mark. wounds inflicted by sharp teeth of one or more other dolphins which may have attacked the individual. This behaviour has been recorded in America, and if the post mortem confirms that this is the case with this dolphin it will be the first recorded incident of its kind in the UK. A flying Gurnard was caught alive off Penzance on 6th December and presented to the Blue Reef Aquarium Newquay.

There were 30 dead cetaceans found washed up on Cornish beaches during December, bringing the total for 2004 to 223. 111 of these were Harbour Porpoises, 73 were Common Dolphin, 3 Bottlenose Dolphin, 2 Risso.s Dolphin, 2 Striped Dolphin, a Fin Whale and a Pilot Whale. There were also 30 other which were unidentified. Also stranded were 19 Grey Seals, 2 Basking Sharks a Leatherback Turtle and rather surprisingly an Ocean Sunfish on the 1st of December, and dozens of Triggerfish late in the year. As well as various bird species, such as Gannets, Guillemots, Razorbills and Shags the mass strandings of the year, mainly in September, were By-the-wind-Sailors, when not thousands, or millions but billions were reported on some beaches.

Conservation Officer Raymond Dennis

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