Emily de Clive-Lowe

BSc (Hons) Marine Biology & Oceanography

Project

My project is a comparative study of Wembury Voluntary Marine Conservation Area (VMCA) and Bovisands bay which is a non-protected area on the margins of the sound.  I am investigating whether there is a significant difference in the benthic community structure between the VMCA and a non-protected area.  To do this I chose three locations:  the first was within the VMCA and within Wembury bay (a relatively sheltered area); the second location was within the VMCA but outside the bay (a more exposed area); and the last location was within Bovisands bay (a non-protected and relatively exposed area).  The data was collected using Gemma-Lou, a 28ft vessel from the Coxside Diving and Marine Centre, and a lightweight, remote video array which was towed behind the vessel.

Click here or on picture to see video array deployment

Five video transects were undertaken at each location and the frames from each video analysed.  Each organism in the videos was identified as far as possible down to species level, and estimates of species richness and densities were calculated.  Hopefully my project will determine whether there is a positive effect on species richness and density that could be attributed to the VMCA.  With the effects of Marine Protected Area in the UK being poorly understood, any information about the area that can be offered may be beneficial.

The staff at the Diving and Marine Centre were invaluable for my project, without their help my data collection would have been difficult, if not near impossible.  Their help and experience was not only extremely useful in getting me to the sites that I wanted to study but also in helping to fix the video array when it had an unfortunate collision with a large rock (ooopps!).

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