Lundy Marine Festival 2022
The Lundy Marine Festival 2022 will take place over two months this coming summer, from Thursday 14th July to Sunday 11th September 2022.
Its purpose is to highlight the existence of the island’s Marine Protected Area (at 50 years old, the oldest marine nature reserve in the UK) through various participatory projects and educational activities for young and old alike. We also intend to raise awareness of marine conservation in general.
The Festival will act as an ‘umbrella’ for various projects and activities, all of which have a connection to the sea and to the Marine Protected Area in particular. At its core will be a marine Bioblitz – an opportunity to discover as many different species as possible occurring on the island’s shores and under water.
The Festival will be relying on the active participation of visitors to Lundy, with a wide range of ‘citizen science’ projects, activities, displays and competitions taking place. These will be for non-divers and divers alike. Whether you’re someone who has very little marine biological knowledge (and hasn’t done this sort of thing before), or if you’re a seasoned campaigner who has quite a bit of experience of events like this, there’ll be something for you to get involved with. And besides getting you to have some fun, you’ll be contributing useful data which will help towards the future management of the MPA.
Interested in diving? Lundy is one of the premier dive destinations in the UK, famed for its varied scenery, its shipwrecks, its variety of seabed habitats and its colourful marine life. However, it is not for novice divers – you must read this page to make sure the dive charter skippers will be willing to take you to dive at the island.
Background To The Festival
A few years ago, a suggestion was made to hold a marine Bioblitz at Lundy. (A Bioblitz is an event whereby volunteers record as many species of plants and animals as possible from a given site within a given time). Most Bioblitzes are centred on terrestrial habitats (woodland, grassland, gardens etc.) with a few being conducted at the coast during periods of low spring tides. They rely heavily on the knowledge and enthusiasm of volunteers.
The suggestion was welcomed by others attending the MPA’s Advisory Group meeting back in May 2017, but a few difficulties became immediately apparent. The weather would play a big part – suppose a weekend was chosen for the Bioblitz during the summer and the weather turned foul. The ferry would be cancelled, resulting in only those staying on the island at the time being able to take part – disaster! All that planning, arrangements, personnel – all for nought…
So, having given the proposal a bit more thought, it was decided to expand the duration of the Bioblitz to… the whole of the summer! This would deal with the adverse weather scenario (as surely there’d be some days over the summer when the sun would shine); to have both an intertidal and a subtidal Bioblitz; to tag on a few conservation-oriented citizen science projects; and to enlarge the whole event into a celebration of the island’s Marine Protected Area. This was how the idea of having a Marine Festival came into being.
