Halfway through Lent Term, Lea & Eve from the Green Lancasterteam took 20 students on an ECOWild day on Walney Island partnered with The Bay: a Blueprint for Recovery, the first of three field trips planned for Lent term. Our ECOWildfield trips have a focus on learning and connecting to nature, whereas our ECOWoodstrips focus more on giving volunteers the opportunity to participate in conservation and ecological restoration work taking place across the northwest.

Early morning on Saturday the 18th of February, we caught the train from Lancaster to Barrow-in-Furness and then took a short bus ride over a bridge to Walney Island! We were greeted by our hosts for the day, Community Engagement Officer Yolanda Aze from The Bay, and volunteers Jean and Paul.

Yolanda gave us an introduction to The Bay project and a fascinating presentation about sharks and their vital importance for oceanic ecosystems. Did you know that sharks have survived all five major mass extinction events in Earth’s history and have therefore been around for at least 420 million years? They are extremely important for keeping ocean ecosystems in balance, but sadly the oceanic abundance of sharks and rays has declined by a shocking 71% since 1970 due to fishing pressure (Source: Nature Article). We urgently need stricter catch limits, prohibitions and more marine protected areas (MPAs) to avoid population collapse.

The Shark Trust collates information from beach surveys to monitor shark populations - and we played a part in their work on Saturday too. We carried out a survey of the coastline, collecting shark egg cases (empty ones!) and ray cases, also known as mermaid purses, and submitted our data to the Shark Trust. We found almost 700 small spotted catshark cases and thornback ray cases in total, and two nursehound shark cases, the largest catshark species found in the UK! It was amazing to see such a huge collection of egg cases found in just over an hour of searching. We also collected and recorded types of marine litter in the ‘fish&click’ app which monitors marine litter and its sources. Ghost gear (abandoned or lost fishing gear) makes up at least 10% of all marine plastic pollution.

After a lunch break sitting by the sea, we took part in a kahoot quiz to see how much we’d learnt about sharks and sea life. After the quiz, we had a short walk up the coastline to Earnse Bay where we looked in the rock pools and recorded all the different species we could find - this data will also be used by Cumbria Wildlife trust for species monitoring! On the walk along the coastline we saw seaweed such as eggwrack and hornwrack, kelp, whelk eggs, oyster shells, sea sponge and honeycomb reef. In the rock pools we saw hermit crabs, shore crabs, red and green sea anemones, common periwinkles, limpets, sandhoppers and many more! After we’d finished taking photos of all the amazing species we’d seen, we hopped on the bus and made our way back to Lancaster.

Thanks so much to everyone who came on the field trip. Hopefully it was an enriching, educational experience, and you can be proud of your efforts contributing to the valuable shoreline surveys.

Why not get involved with our weekly ECOWoods sessions and our ECOWild Adventures? You can now register for our upcoming field trip toRestoring Hardknott Forest. Visit the Green Lancaster events feed on our website, sign up for our newsletter and don’t hesitate to follow us on Facebook or Instagram.