Our Common Ocean
‘Wild isles’, presented by David Attenborough, is being broadcast on the BBC in March and April 2023. In contrast to his other work, this series turns away from the wider world to take a deeper look at the wildlife of Britain and Ireland . This blog, although with an emphasis more on what is in and beneath the waters around these wild isles, also has the same focus. So why do I concentrate on the local, when there is so much beauty, so much wonder elsewhere in nature? Let’s start with what the reason is not
So why the local focus? Put simply, it is my home. It is where I live. It is also what I have access to. With the exception of going to the EMSEA conference on Crete in 2015 I haven’t flown since 1988, when my last flights were as a young soldier on the plains of Germany practising loading and unloading drills from a Sea King helicopter, soaked by rain accelerated like bullets by the downdraft of the blades. I visited a dive show a few years ago, and was shocked by just how many companies were offering ‘liv
There are wonders in our waters, despite our nature-depleted status. We have basking shark , the second largest fish in the world. We have leatherback turtles as summer visitors, along with sunfish . We have grey seals , common around our coast with 95% of the European population and 40% of the world population residing in our waters. At smaller scales we have nudibranchs such as the violet sea slug , the orange-clubbed sea slug , and molluscs such as the blue-rayed limpet , hunkered down in their pits in t
Our Common Ocean