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Seal Group At present, no one has ever been able to state how many seals live in Cornish waters. Therefore, population trends are unknown.In a project designed to run from 1997 to 1999, the Seal Group hopes to visit breeding sites at ten-day intervals between late July and the end of October. Pups will be counted and this will allow us to determine the size of the "resident" population.As all breeding sites are on sea-cave or otherwise remote beaches, boat support will be essential. The group asks whether anyone would be prepared to lend us boat support - ferrying us to the breeding sites down the length of the Cornish coast - when either calm or slight sea conditions are prevailing. Without such support, we would have to continue our very restricted investigation of two or three of the eleven main breeding sites - and that would defeat the main purpose of the project.Stephen Westcott Dolphin Group Fin whales visit Cornwall December 96 was a remarkable month for cetacean sightings from Cornwall, with record numbers of the largest and smallest species that we ever see here. On the 15th, Jean Lawman saw a gannet feeding frenzy under way east of Housel Bay on The Lizard. Looking into the area of dive splashes with binoculars, she was amazed to see a great number of fast-moving porpoise backs and dorsal fins, perhaps representing 60 animals. Such large numbers have not been reported from the coast for 40 or more years. Their presence is probably connected through feeding conditions with the other epic - a group of four huge fin whales seen from Cape Cornwall, Porthcurno and Mousehole on three occasions over a period of two weeks. Fin whales are the second-largest animals on earth,with a maximum length of 90 feet. Their blows 
were easily visible from two miles without binoculars. The blow is a vertical cloud of spray which drifts away on the wind and fades to nothing in about five seconds. Fin whales are known to enter shallow water, like the one that stranded alive near Newlyn and had its rescue featured on the 999 programme. Their numbers are probably rising steadily since the cessation of commercial whaling, which vastly reduced their numbers. Unnatural mortality for fin whales now probably comes only from collisions with fishing gear and boats.Fin whale blows. Photo: Nick Tregenza Porpoises visit the Body Shop With help from the Body Shop in Truro, the Cornwall Wildlife Trust has obtained a grant of £10,000 from the Body Shop Foundation for the development of a self-contained electronic instrument - an "automatic porpoise detector" - which will be of great value around the world in unravelling the very difficult problems of porpoise conservation, especially in relation to gill-net by-catch. There are seven different porpoises on earth (none elsewhere!) and all produce very similar sonar clicks. The development project will depend on the electronic expertise of a leading bio-acoustician, Ed Harland, who, with others involved, is giving his services free to the Trust, and matching funds will come from the European Commission Fisheries Directorate.The detector will look like a solid cylinder of plastic about the size of a drink can. Inside will be a hydrophone and a highly specialised computer which will count the number of porpoise clicks it hears every ten seconds and store a compressed form of this number in its memory. When retrieved from the sea, several weeks of data can be downloaded to a computer, revealing previously inaccessible information about porpoise activity. ThatÕs the idea - now we get on with the work of making it real... Nick Tregenza Otter Group The walk along the Tamar from Endsleigh to Horsebridge during February was organised to coincide with perfect weather conditions. About 30 participants enjoyed the excursion and at the same time learned something of otters, examining spraint sites and footprints along this very good stretch of otter habitat.The March meeting, which was held at Five Acres with Trevor Renals of the Environment Agency, together with his microscope, was well attended, and samples of spraint were analysed. Visits were made to local sites to check on signs of otters, and the area transpired to be somewhat like the curate's egg - good in parts.The next meeting of the Otter Group will be on Saturday 27th September 1997 at Paradise Park, Hayle, to see Eurasian, American river and Asian short-clawed otters and also to visit local otter-frequented sites. Please see the current diary for details.There is still a need for records in certain areas, and if you are interested please contact me on (01579) 370427. David Curtis |