White Flower Farm:Troubled Waters

Lundy Island, a granite post off the coast of North Devon, is one of the great success stories of Britain green. Measuring just three and a half miles long, which marks the spot where the Bristol Channel meets the white horses of the Atlantic. Its wild waters are full of marine life, jellyfish, sponges and out of sea caves under the water, basking sharks patrol its reefs and rare long-clawed lobsters call its sandbanks home. These locusts are among the luckiest in the world - Lundy is Britain's only legal marine nature reserve and all the species here given the opportunity to thrive.Lundy 's without having the area, the first of its kind in the UK, was introduced in 2003 to try to reverse the problems caused by overfishing. Four years later, the results are already visible. "We have seen a threefold increase in the number of lobsters within the closed area since its inception," says Chris Davis, a naval officer of conversation for English Nature. Now a new report by the World Wildlife Fund along with the Marine Biological Association (MBA) has called the hottest spots such as biodiversity Lundy established in the UK. A total of 120 places a lot of underwater activity but susceptible to threats such as overfishing and pollution have been identified.Kate Reeves, of WWF, said: "Our seas are becoming busier than ever before due to an increase human activities that threaten the marine environment, fisheries and shipping dredging and wind farms. " Dr. Keith Hiscock, one of the authors of the report, said that the abandonment of Britain's secrets is a threat to sea for more than just the survival of our marine species, the salt can be full of treasures that we have yet to discover. To date, the UK has 56 Special Areas of Conservation including marine habitat. Not enough, says Guy Baker of the MBA. "A less than 0. 001 percent of the UK seabed has full legal protection at a time that marine biodiversity is under increasing pressure from our activities. The WWF report uses objective scientific information to prioritize vital conservation efforts. " MULL.Standing proudly exposed in a cliff on the Isle of Mull is MacCulloch fossil tree, believed that between 50 and 60 million years. At the height of 12 meters, the tree, covered with lava during the Tertiary period and are now exposed in part, rises above the soft sandy beaches of this island Inner Hebrides If one were to go -. impossible, of course -. point of view would be very little snow cover peak over Calgary in the far north, deer and wild goats roam Ben White through the open moorland. Calls vultures and large eagles drifting in the sea where the Atlantic gray seals, bottlenose dolphins, minke whales, porpoises and even orca are often seen. In the adjacent island of Staffa is Fingal's Cave, an underground sea cave worth writing poetry about, its basalt columns and abundance of marine life have inspired Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson and Mendelssohn.DOGGER BANK. Dogger Bank is a large sandbar formed in sub coastal southern North Sea by glacial processes and submergence of the rising sea level. A piece of living history, is part of the remains of a large land mass known as the Dogger of the land, which existed during the last ice age and connected Britain to continental Europe. The epibenthos (animals that live at the bottom of the sea) are crabs and fish, sponges, sea anemones and bryozoans. There are a lot of slow moving animals such as snails, slugs, starfish and sea urchins. Ships of war have fallen here in numerous sea battles - Jutland, the Falklands and Dogger Hill - and is believed to have started the trend of placing fake shipwrecks in fish tanks. Some of their formation is due to a 1931 earthquake that struck 23 kilometers below the bank.SALCOMBE STARTING POINT estuary. Salcombe extends from the station bucket and spade-Salcombe until 19 century lighthouse atop a rocky start point. Teeming with marine life, this is an estuary of a river that has no power to, what results is a mixture of rocks and sediments of the seabed on the open coast. Salcombe's most precious body eelgrass, a perennial species identifiable by its flowers having long, flowing, ribbon-like leaves. Seagrass beds are important habitat for all kinds of creatures, including juvenile seahorses and -. Occasionally seen on the coast of Salcombe.UNST "The sun could fire up the air without a break ... but these great rollers would be running along all the external coast, thundering and thundering by day and night" wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, Muckle Flügge lighthouse on the island of Unst wonderfully wind, the northernmost part of Britain. Almost 150 years later, Unst is still a treasure island. thin, well drained, are superimposed on the eastern side of the island, where serpentine and gabbroic rocks, once part of an ancient ocean seabed, give way to a vast expanse of ocean rich in life. Already in the fog rocks Swinnen Ness, visiting endemic birds of North America, Siberia and Central Asia are common. The island is surrounded by 170 high, cliffs, home to more than 100,000 breeding sea birds, including 25,000 pairs of puffins, geese and big rain. Perhaps the most famous skuas full-time resident is Albert, a black-browed albatrosses, which - they say - has spent his days watching the sea from a ledge only among blanket bogs of the peninsula since 1972. PLYMOUTH SOUND. The beautiful sea fans of pink, a type of coral that grows at right angles to the mainstream, is abundant in the deep water reefs and Plymouth Sound. Until it was first discovered there in 2002, had only one other known stronghold in British waters - the Hebrides. With increasing frequency the size of a plate, is a major warm-water species of the Marine Biological Association is particularly keen to protect. WWF is also looking to bring the measures to protect the biodiversity of nearby Lyme Bay, following recent concerns about the detrimental impact of trails in the area. Lundy Island, 10 miles offshore in the Bristol Channel, has been advocated as the poster child of Plymouth Sound from which imposed a fishing exclusion zone around the island to protect its many varieties of lobsters, crabs, corals and sponges. Testing the 2004/05 monitoring program suggests that lobsters in the area appears to have increased in size and abundance.MENAI STRAITNestled in the shadows of Snowdonia, the 22 km of the Menai Strait is a designated area of ​​outstanding natural beauty. The protected coastline is dotted with ancient forts, shipwrecks and lighthouses, its centerpiece is a suspension bridge elegant iron, designed by Robert Stephenson. Its ecology is extraordinarily diverse and has led to development of rare animal species. Some, like one of the many varieties of sponges, have joined forces with hydroids and dahlia anemone, and live together, intertwined like a soft carpet. On the other side of the Strait of Anglesey, twitchers come in droves to snatch glimpses of rare oystercatchers and curlews, while seals, porpoises and otters lounge on the benches. In the summer, the Menai Strait took the brunt of oil spill eight kilometers, devastating much of its marine life. SATURN REEFSaturn biogenic reef is a coral, or live, formed by the tube building worm Sabellaria spinulosa. Located in the southern North Sea, the reef is located on a sandbank, pushing dense clumps of rocks and above the seabed, in the territory of a diverse group of organisms - unfortunately, including vessels Fishery. While best known in the world, reefs are the coral reefs of tropical waters, there are only a handful of other areas known Sabellaria spinulosa reefs well developed in Europe waters.RATHLIN ISLANDSix miles off the coast of Ballycastle in Northern Ireland Rathlin Island is a small limestone shaped like a boot full of life because of the birds. Guillemots and kittiwakes, with razorbills, fulmars and puffins nest here by the thousands. Cliffs give way to deep water, rock dominated by sponges and seaweed. Northern coastal waters are in the territory of the basking shark, common seal and sea cucumbers. But marine life on the island of Rathlin is increasingly threatened by pollution and the path of shipping vessels.