Underwater photos: Britain and the Maldives

Award winning photographer and local expert on marine life Cate Barrow once again entertained us with a fantastic talk illustrated with stunning images of underwater life.

Cate entertained us with a series of pictures from home and way. The fascinating collection of shapes and forms is a delight for a photographer and Cate takes her time to capture these delights in full technicolour.

She started her talk with a description of the techniques and equipment before showing us pictures from UK waters which may be cold and a little cloudy at times, but we still have some wonderful creatures.

Off to the warmer parts of the world and to reefs and open water and things got even more spectacular and to many of us frightening with some stunning coral, polyp and shark pictures such as this one taken by Cate and shared here with her permission of a Bull shark with 10/17 mm lens at Beqa Lagoon Fiji March 2010

For those of you who are not photographers, a 10/17mm lens is a wide angle lens that makes things look further away than they really are so this is incredibly up close and personal with the shark

As usual Cate's talk was not just a visual spectacular, but informative as well. The descriptions she gave us of the measures taken to ensure she protects the environment whilst getting the pictures was fascinating.

You can see more of Cate's pictures on-line HERE and a write up of one of her adventures with sharks  HERE.

If you would like to hear more why not join us as she has already offered to talk to us again.

Invasive Plant Species in Britain

Professor Denis Murphy of the University of Glamorgan gaves us a fascinating insight into Invasive Plant Species in Britain: a Historical, Scientific and Socioeconomic Perspective

 

The talk focussed on the 4 "worst" plants, the infamous Japanese Knotweed (left), Himalayan Balsam, Rhododendron ponticum and 

Giant Hogweed and explained how they got here, the problems that they cause to people and property and the actions that can be take or are being considered in dealing with them. For instance the Japanese Knotweed Psyllid Aphalara itadori which is being considered as a biological control against the plant.


If you are interested in reading more about non native species you may find this website useful DEFRA GB Non-native Species Information Portal

When it comes to these some of our local ancestors must take some blame ... for Japanese Knotweed the database records Location of first record: Glamorgan

But as Denis reminded us - just 12,000  years ago Britain was an ice covered wasteland. So all our plants and animals are non native if you think long enough

The Wonderful World of Worms

Teresa Darbyshire of the National Museum of Wales gave us an excellent short talk after our AGM on The Wonderful World of Worms: Marine Bristleworms (Polychaetes) & Their Importance





This was an interesting talk and I had never realised how important these creatures were in understanding the marine environment around us in Wale. There is information about this work available on the Museum Website at http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/160/

Having seen some wonderful pictures Teresa was happy to answer a number of questions and key amongst these were questions about identification and she told us that there are plans for an on-line system similar to the excellent website about British Bivalves..


What website you ask... well here it is http://naturalhistory.museumwales.ac.uk/britishbivalves/Browse_taxa.php

Radyr Court Road

One of our members has brought to our attention a proposed development of 48 houses on a greenfield site that will will be destroyed and replaced with a 48 dwelling housing estate, and the lane that will suffer 13 times the traffic.in her words "I walk along this little woodland area often and would be devastated if they build all over it."

It's clear from the location of this development that the view from Hailey Park which we regularly visit will be compromised by this development

A campaign website has been set-up at http://www.saveradyrcourtroad.org.uk/

They are looking to get people to sing an on-line petition and need at least 50 local people on the petition, then they will earn the right to address the Planning Committee in person to make their feelings known.  But they would like many, many more, to demonstrate how much the local community values its rural surroundings.

Regards
Andy

Urgent Request from Flat Holm

Tonight (Wednesday 19th September we heard about the following request 

The historic Flat Holm island is being reviewed by Cardiff Council and they want to hear what YOU have to say about it.

The Council want to hear from the public about their views and experiences of Flat Holm Island.

Cardiff’s Economy and Culture Scrutiny Committee will be investigating the way Flat Holm Island is run and is inviting the public to have their say.

“If you have a view please email (by Thursday 20th September)
scrutinyviewpoints@cardiff.gov.uk and your comments will be considered as a part of the investigations.”
Councillor Craig Williams, Chair of the Economy and Culture Scrutiny Committee

Thank you

New Field meeting Announced

An additional field meeting has been added to the programme sent to members 

This is listed on the Programme on this blog, and oon the main society website which is shown to the right of this post

The New meeting is Saturday 8th Jun which is a full day meeting at  Taff Fechan, Merthyr and is a joint trip with WTSWW

Regards
Andy

Update on Orchards

We have received an update from the Welsh Traditional Orchards Inventory project

They have now finished locating and mapping all of the potential orchards, apart from a few areas of Ceredigion still to be done in the next couple of weeks. Below is a table showing the number they have found in each county, along with the number and percentage allocated so far to volunteer surveyors for ground-truthing. As you can see in some areas they are still in need of volunteers

Early next year the inventory will be fully available to all via CCW. PTES will also produce county summaries with key statistics such as the remaining area of traditional orchards and the condition these are in. This should be useful for a wide-range of conservation and heritage projects, will produce baseline data for BAPs and hopefully help secure future funding for this important habitat.

County	Potential orchards	No. allocated	% allocated
Blaenau Gwent	6	6	100.0
Bridgend	105	41	39.0
Caerphilly	95	94	98.9
Cardiff	57	48	84.2
Carmarthenshire	811	206	25.4
Ceredigion*	374	50	13.4
Conwy	222	42	18.9
Denbighshire	601	45	7.5
Flintshire	762	149	19.6
Gwynedd	412	81	19.7
Isle of Anglesey	355	53	14.9
Merthyr Tydfil	18	5	27.8
Monmouthshire	975	388	39.8
Neath Port Talbot	106	31	29.2
Newport	123	115	93.5
Pembrokeshire	119	14	11.8
Powys	957	235	24.6
Rhondda Cynon Taff	124	86	69.4
Swansea	267	230	86.1
Torfaen	33	30	90.9
Vale of Glamorgan	368	114	31.0
Wrexham	310	148	47.7

You can contact PTES via www.ptes.org if you are able to help them