February 2012

In our research work at Studland Bay in Dorset, here in England, we use small tags made by Floy Tags based in Seattle, Washington in America, so that we can identify our individual seahorses. These tags are each inidvidually numbered and this has allowed us to make so many discoveries about these amazing fish, especially about their movements, throughout the year and who they pair with.

Floy Tags have now made a very kind donation to our work, by supplying us with 300 individually numbered tags, so that we can continue with this work. We will be using the tags mainly on our site at Studland and in our forthcoming project in Malta, where trust volunteers Beccy and Jonny are setting up a similar project where eco-tourist volunteers will have the opportunity to take part in this unusal project. Check out our Malta project page under research for updates.

We would like to thank Floy Tags so much for their kind donation. http://www.floytag.com/

As you can see in the picture below the tags help us in identifying seahorses; we have done a great deal of research over the years and we know that these tags do not affect the seahorses. When we are not reading the tags they sit under the neck of the seahorses and cannot be seen.

Pentax UK has kindly donated a WG-O1 camera with built in gps and underwater facilties for our research work. This amazing camera can go down to 10 metres and takes pictures in, low light levels, ideal for taking pictures of seahorses without a flash; which was banned following recommenadtions by The Seahorse Trust in 2010.

Photographs are vital to our work, so that we can identify individuals and the habitat they live in and the WG-O1 will be a superb tool to allow us to understand more about the secretive lives of Seahorses.

As we go into the next season of research dives we will post pictures of seahorses taken with this camera in our reports and on the website.

Thank you so much to Pentax for this kind donation.

http://www.pentax.co.uk/

GAC Logistics is the largest independant global, shipping, logistics and marine company in the world and have kindly made a donation for the research work at Studland Bay.

GAC are responsible for helping to ship captive bred seahorses and other fish species around the world to the different research and captive breeding projects that are looking into saving the marine species of the world. Without this care and attention we could not do so much work to understand the needs of fragile species.

As well as their conservation logistics they also have a dedicated team for humanitarian aid, which supports the work of the United Nations World Food Programme bringing aid where ever it is needed throughout the world. This huge company spans the world and through its humanitarian and conservation work is making a huge difference to the human and environmental world.

GAC want to develop long term links with the trust and we hope to develop relations with them much further as time and our projects develop.

We would like to offer our thanks to GAC and particularly Peter Smith Fish Manager from London GAC for this kind donation which will directly help the work at Studland.

www.gac.com

We would like to invite you to support our colleagues at the World Conservation and Wildlife Trust in their chairty dinner which is to be held at the Gem Restaurant in Islington in London on Thursday the 28th of June at 8pm.

The dinner will be in aid of the WCWT’s oceanic conservation campaign which supports vital conservation for the worlds marine life.

It is a minimum donation of £30 and the evening will include delicious food prepared by the Turkish cooks at the Gem restaurant, live music and a charity auction.

For more details contact Robin Johnson (founder and director of WCWT on 07403116332 or on robin@wcwtinternational.org