Native oyster shells 35 meters (115ft) underwater and the discovery of a uncommon spiny seahorse are only just a few of the surprising finds highlighted in the British Sub-Aqua Club’s newly released Operation Oyster 2022 file.
Launched serve in 2021, Operation Oyster is a BSAC citizen science project created to enable divers to play a key role in oyster mattress restoration everywhere in the UK coastline.
The project’s “mission” is to acknowledge and doc proof of the UK’s native oyster population, which has viewed a 95% descend in population numbers over the final 150 years on account of overfishing, disease, pollution and habitat loss.
With its first fleshy one year now completed, the 2022 Operation Oyster file has highlighted the progress that has been made in establishing the extent of the native oyster’s decline.
The BSAC project is for the time being working with the BLUE Marine Foundation, Scottish marine charity Seawilding, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the University of Portsmouth. Files aloof by the use of the project will almost definitely be being made accessible to the scientific community.
Operation Oyster coordinator Andy Hunt acknowledged the 2022 file has also proven the work that restful needs to be completed:
“Now we have dived the breadth of the UK in 2022 and found proof of native flat oysters where we weren’t awaiting them. Then all as soon as more, the project has now not but found any live native oyster reefs or colossal beds.
“There may per chance be hope though. Are living native oysters are retaining on in locations, but just now not in the amount they old to be. A key discovering of 2022’s actions used to be a carbon retailer of dilapidated native flat oyster shells that that will per chance well help enlighten us what the seabed old to seem esteem and what we may per chance per chance well restful be aiming to restore.”
The fleshy file will almost definitely be downloaded at bsac.com.
John Lianghttps://www.deeperblue.com/
John Liang is the News Editor at DeeperBlue.com. He first obtained the diving malicious program whereas in Excessive Faculty in Cairo, Egypt, where he earned his PADI Commence Water Diver certification in the Red Sea off the Sinai Peninsula. Since then, John has dived in a volcanic lake in Guatemala, among white-tipped sharks off the Pacific Flit of Costa Rica, and other locations at the side of a pool in Las Vegas serving to to break the realm anecdote for the greatest underwater press conference.
