{"id":106284,"date":"2025-09-01T05:23:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T05:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/106284\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T05:23:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T05:23:07","slug":"sharks-among-creatures-spotted-in-falmouth-harbour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/106284\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharks among creatures spotted in Falmouth harbour"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n As part of the study, the Falmouth<\/a> Harbour team has helped Natasha Bamford, an MSc Marine Conservation student at the University of Plymouth, make and deploy Baited Remote Underwater Video Systems units (BRUVS) which use underwater cameras to film marine life attracted to bait-filled canisters.\n<\/p>\n

\n One is off Trefusis Head and the other\u00a0installed below the harbour wall at Church Street Car Park.\n<\/p>\n

\n Falmouth Harbour Environment Manager Vicki Spooner said:\u00a0“I am always fascinated by the incredible creatures living beneath the surface of our seas – so these past few weeks have been particularly exciting.\n<\/p>\n

\n “We\u2019ve been working with Natasha and her colleagues to deploy two BRUVS systems in different areas of the harbour: one off Trefusis Head and the other beside the intertidal reef cubes and habitiles we\u2019ve installed below the harbour wall at Church Street Car Park \u2013 with a project aim to compare a natural rocky reef with an artificial one, to see if there’s a difference in the mobile species present.”\n<\/p>\n

\n Falmouth Harbour are grateful to Our Only World who not only sourced funding for the installation of the habitiles and reef cubes but also provided some additional funding to help them support Natasha and her project.\n<\/p>\n

\n Tina Robinson from Our Only World says, “It\u2019s always a privilege to be involved with the Falmouth Harbour team and be a part of their amazing conservation work.\n<\/p>\n

\n “We extend our sincere thanks to Natasha for her valued hard work and collaboration and also to Sea-Changers who provided the grant.\n<\/p>\n

\n “We are looking forward to the results.”\n<\/p>\n

\n University of Plymouth Masters Student Natasha Bamford deploying a BRUVS camera system at Falmouth\u2019s Church Street Car Park (Image: Falmouth Harbour) Natasha now has around 30 hours of footage to review with a fascinating variety of marine life caught on camera including a nursehound shark, five types of crabs (spider, shore, velvet swimmer, edible and hermit crab), a conger eel, snakelocks anemones and a range of fish including bass, wrasse, shanny, and poor cod.\n<\/p>\n

\n “Artificial reefs like Falmouth\u2019s are created around the world to restore habitats and increase biodiversity, but despite their popularity there\u2019s limited evidence to show how they actually work,” says Natasha.\n<\/p>\n

\n “I\u2019m trying to find out whether these artificial reefs (in Falmouth\u2019s case the habitiles and reef cubes around the harbour walls of Church Street Car Park) \u2013 support the same variety of species as the natural rocky reefs nearby.\n<\/p>\n

\n “As I go through the footage it\u2019s so exciting to see what\u2019s down there \u2013 in one case an entire shoal of more than 100 sand smelts \u2013 and I have to count every one!\n<\/p>\n

\n “I couldn\u2019t have done the project without the incredible help of the Falmouth Harbour team and it\u2019s wonderful for us all to see species interacting within the artificial reef.”\n<\/p>\n

\n Next comes the statistics stage and Natasha will be starting to compare species between the two reef sites ahead of writing her Master’s dissertation.\n<\/p>\n

\n She is hoping her project can be done on a yearly basis and in different locations to see if reefs remain healthy and to understand how artificial reefs are working around the UK, comparing sites to see where they are most effective.\n<\/p>\n

\n Falmouth Harbour will be sharing some of Natasha\u2019s video and other images captured during this project.\n<\/p>\n

\n For more on this and all other environmental, leisure and commercial work of Falmouth Harbour visit https:\/\/www.falmouthharbour.co.uk\/ and for information on the University of Plymouth\u2019s Marine Conservation Research Group visit https:\/\/www.plymouth.ac.uk\/research\/marine-conservation-research-group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As part of the study, the Falmouth Harbour team has helped Natasha Bamford, an MSc Marine Conservation student…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106285,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-106284","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}