Did you ever wonder what on earth that "thing" that you saw on the wreck last weekend was, or even whether it was animal, vegetable or mineral? Could you identify an elephantine sponge, or differentiate between that and a gooseberry, grated carrot or breadcrumb sponge? Did you know that a crab can regenerate its limbs if it loses one in a fight and can even swap from being left to right-handed? The Marine Conservation Society's Marine Identification Course can provide the answers to these and many more questions
I did the course at Swanage on July 22nd/23rd run by the South East Branch of the MCS. The lecturers were Gerry Casey and Paul Biggin, two volunteers from Watford SAC. The day started at 9am, a little challenging for those of us still trying to find Leeson House at this time. To get there, you drive through Langton Mantravers village towards Swanage and a little after the Ship Inn on the right there is a driveway marked Lesson House. The course is run at the classrooms at the back of the house. The location is lovely, especially the gardens on a sunny day, which are full of wild flowers, all clearly labelled. Bear in mind though that you’ll be inside in the dark for some of the day, so take a jumper!
The idea of the course is a basic introduction to marine identification. The Saturday consists of classroom lectures from 9am to 1pm, with plenty of breaks for tea and coffee, which is provided, along with biccies galore. Lunch is next (which isn’t provided, but you have time to drive into Swanage), followed by a dive from 2pm to 4pm under Swanage pier to collect samples. After this you return to Leeson House to identify what you have collected, and the session ends around 6pm. Most people stayed locally and met up in the evening in Swanage for food. If you have problems with accommodation, the lecturers know the cheapest B&Bs! Sunday consists of more classroom lectures, followed by a quiz and details on the work of the MCS. Everything wraps up around 1pm to allow people to go off and dive or start on the long drive home. The materials used are excellent and well varied; great handouts, clear overheads, collections of things to touch and absolutely superb photos, which made me green with envy. There are also various books around to reference and buy, and the lecturers are well informed and very friendly.
The diving itself unfortunately left a lot to be desired. I’d dived under Swanage pier as a novice in March 1999 and remembered it fondly, having seeing loads of crabs and other living "things" in a relatively small shallow (5m max) area. The conditions on the afternoon of the course were very different, despite the sunshine strong easterly winds, which were sending waves up to a metre high against the pier legs. After some debate we decided to drop in carefully off the jetty, just to collect some samples, which was all we could manage in those conditions. We declined trying to ascend the ladder and chose to swim back to shore, which gave us an opportunity to collect more samples and practice our exiting-from-a-shore-dive-in-very-bumpy-conditions technique. It burned enough calories to earn us an ice cream, and my buddy managed to bravely cling onto our sample bag.
Once we were back in the classroom, the dive became worthwhile. We’d collected a fair amount between us, although mostly the sort of stuff you’d swim past on a dive, believing that you’d seen "nothing". However, once under the microscope, everyone was enraptured for over an hour. Once you got up close to the piles of weed and stones that we’d grabbed, little living things started to appear and swim around. The dishes were full of worms, glass shrimps (only 2mm long, but perfectly formed), a tiny 3mm Hermit crab and lots of fascinating sponges and weed and algae. We watched things swim, fight, mate and generally exist in this tiny world. Looking through the lenses was like watching a programme on National Geographic, only it was going on in front of you, and you didn't need to subscribe to cable. It really made you realise what you didn’t notice as you finned past chasing that elusive basking shark...
Should this have whetted your appetite, then check out the MCS courses available in the furture. Details are available on www.mcsuk.org.