2017 Hengistbury Head BioBlitz Results

19th June 2017 | by

Spoiler alert - we smashed it!!

2017 Hengistbury Head BioBlitz Results

We had an absolute blast at the 2017 Hengistbury Head BioBlitz event on Saturday! In case you can’t hear the sound of trumpets being blown, we also did rather well.

 

We had two hours to identify as many species on Hengistbury Head beach as possible, as part of a 24hr BioBlitz event, organised by the Hengistbury Head Visitor Centre. With the much appreciated help of The Sea Hippy (AKA Jess Mumford) and all the volunteers and members of the public that turned up, we took on some pretty hot conditions and hit the beach.

 

Some of our lovely helpers – thank you!!

We were looking for terrestrial plants, insects, birds, seaweeds, crustaceans, shells, shark and ray eggcases – the works! We were very glad to have brought our copy of “The Essential Guide to Beach Combing and the Strandline” by local wildlife champions Steve Trewhella and Julie Hatcher.

 

We highly recommend this great guidebook!

 

We’re thrilled to say that we absolutely obliterated last year’s record of 16 species with a whopping 40!! We couldn’t believe the diversity of species that we found, on what at first glance looks like a fairly barren shingle beach. We’re very pleased that included in the count are FOUR elasmobranch species – undulate ray, spotted ray, thornback ray and smallspotted catshark.

 

An undulate ray eggcase found during the survey.

 

A few of the finds from the day – we’re still blown away by the diversity of species.

 

We just love the hard working people at the Hengistbury Head Visitor Centre and are very happy to have assisted with this event, helping them to smash last year’s total species count of 407 with an impressive 616! Congrats guys!

We’re looking forward to taking part in their Future For Wildlife educational project later this summer. Check back for updates!!

 

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