MCS received funding from the Countryside Council for Wales to carry out a roadshow in north Wales in the counties of Anglesey and Gwynedd in order to teach students (years 1-7) about the fantastic marine wildlife resident along Welsh coasts. We carried out the Roadshow at 10 separate schools in Anglesey and Gwynedd in October 2005.

MCS worked with the National Museum and Galleries Wales and Andy Starbuck (of the Whaleworkshop - www.Whaleworkshop.org) to produce a fantastic day of teaching, talks, and hands-on workshop activities to get primary school students stimulated about marine creatures and conservation.

The days involved:

• Talks on large marine creatures by Andy Starbuck of Whalworkshop, referring to dolphins, porpoises, whales, seals, sharks and turtles in UK/Welsh waters. These talks use life-size models of creatures to illustrate the large size they attain in the wild.
• Classroom activities and workshops held by Lara Murphy of NMGW to illustrate the importance of invertebrate species in the marine environment.
• Distribution of posters and information packs to teachers to impart further lessons on the wonderful marine world.
• Distribution of CD-roms highlighted the habitats and species in the outer Bristol Channel, designed specifically for schools to understand how survey work operates, and allowing schools to carry out their own classroom activities to undertake sampling of the marine environment.
  

Work with Local Biodiversity Action Plan Officers

We also have been liaising and communicating the Welsh Local Biodiversity Action Plan Officers in order to inform them about the importance of marine BAPs in Wales, and providing them with information (posters, leaflets and recording cards) to distribute to local sea users to better engage them in the BAP process for the marine environment.

We have also provided updates and information on the distribution of marine BAP species relevant to each catchment of Local BAPs in Wales. All LBAP officers now have a list of relevant species and habitats that occur in their waters, that aren't necessarily listed on their online local BAP plans (goto http://www.ukbap.org.uk/ for further information).

We also are currently writing CCW with best practice advice on how to carry forward the actions in the Biodiversity Action Plans for which MCS is lead partner, namely, the grouped plan for marine turtles, the basking shark, the fanshell and the pink seafan and pink seafan anemone.

MCS. Whaleworkshop and NMGW hope to carry this work out in future into wider Wales, and will be developing a proposal to carry this work forward in 2006.