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Recent Posts
- Towed underwater camera sled available for hire
- Albatross: Ocean navigators par excellence.
- Scallop dredging: how we approach marine habitat protection from entirely the wrong direction.
- Nitrogen narcosis, Rapture of the Depths, what do we really know about it?
- Great whites sharks, makos or sailfish, what is the fastest fish?
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Author Archives: Colin Munro
Towed underwater camera sled available for hire
Marine Bio-images towed underwater sled is available for hire. The camera sled in constructed out of tubular stainless steel and comes with 120 metres of ROV armoured umbilical cable and removable weights. It has been successfully deployed to 90 metres … Continue reading
Posted in Seabed survey and monitoring
Tagged camera sled, camera sledge, towed underwater camera sled, towed underwater camera sledge, underwater camera sled, underwater camera sledge, underwater camera system, underwater camera systems, underwater survey
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Scallop dredging: how we approach marine habitat protection from entirely the wrong direction.
Scallop dredging is a crude, inefficient, non-selective, and hugely destructive means of collecting shellfish. It is akin to using a bulldozer to collect mushrooms. If you were to plough through the top few inches of soil with a bulldozer bucket, … Continue reading
Posted in Lyme Bay marine ecology
Tagged bottom towed fishing gear, fisheries impacts, fishing environmental impacts, fishing gear habitat impacts, fishing gear seabed impacts, fishing impacts, Lane's Ground reef, Lyme Bay, marine ecology, marine environmental impacts, Marine Protected Areas, Marine zoning, scallop dredgers, scallop dredging, scallop dredging impacts, seabed habitat assessment, seabed habitat destruction, The Exeters Reef
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Nitrogen narcosis, Rapture of the Depths, what do we really know about it?
Rapture of the Deep Many years ago, I was diving off the west coast of Scotland with a group of friends. Our planned dive for that morning was a deep wall dive. I was paired up with a new diver … Continue reading
Posted in Diving
Tagged British Army Diving, Colin Munro Photography, decompression theory, diving history, diving medicine, Guybon Damant, JS Haldane, marine bio-images, meyer-Overton theory, nitrogen narcosis, rapture of the deep, Rapture of the depths, Reef Research Lyme Bay, RNPL, Royal Engineer Diving School, Royal Navy Diving
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Great whites sharks, makos or sailfish, what is the fastest fish?
My only encounters with a great white were on a cage diving trip, many years ago. Two of us at a time would enter the cage and wait, cameras poised. This was around Isla Guadalupe, 250km west of Baja Peninsula, Mexico. … Continue reading
Posted in Marine wildlife
Tagged blue marlin, countercurrent, fastest fish, fastest fish in the ocean, great white shark, great white sharks, great white speed, how fast is a mako shark, mako shark, mako shark speed, mako sharks, marlin speed, porbeagle, porbeagle shark, porbeagle sharks, rete mirabilia, sailfish, sailfish speed, salmon shark, salmon sharks, swordfish, swordfish speed, warm blooded sharks
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The Grind. Is campaigning for it to stop or condemning it on social media hypocritical?
The grind, or grindadrap, is a non-commercial, community based whale and dolphin drive in the Faroe Islands. Around 840 pilot whales and white sided dolphins are killed every year. This is done by local boats driving them in to designated … Continue reading
Posted in Marine wildlife
Tagged dolphin drive, Faroe Islands, grindadrap, pilot whales, Sea Sheherd, the grind, whale drive, whale hunting, whale killing, whaling
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Cornwall’s blue sharks
An account of photographing blue sharks off Cornwall, Southwest Britain, a few years back, and a link to buying fine art prints of these amazing hunters of of the oceans at colinmunroimages.com. On a clear July morning I stumbled out … Continue reading
The extraordinary life cycle of the lion’s mane jellyfish
Jellyfish, or sea jellies as they are now often called (clearly they are not fish) are amongst the most ancient of multi-organ animals. Fossils of jellyfish (or scyphozoans, to give them their scientific name) are found only rarely as they … Continue reading
Posted in Marine wildlife
Tagged Arran, Atlantic marine life, Atlantic sealife, british marine life, british sea life, Cyanea, Cyanea capillata, jellyfish, lion's mane jelly, lion's mane jellyfish, scottish marine life, scottish sealife, scottish wildlife, scyphozoans, sea jellies, sea jelly, seajellies, seajelly, undersea britain, undersea scotland
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Scallop dredging: why is it considered so damaging to reefs?
I first wrote this blog back in 2012. If moved off-site for several years, but in 2020 I’ve reinstated it, with a few very minor changes. Lyme bay now has statutory protection from scallop dredging, and all towed bottom fishing … Continue reading
Posted in Lyme Bay marine ecology
Tagged fisheries habitat impacts, Lyme Bay, Lyme Bay Closed Area, Lyme Bay Reefs, marine conservation, mobile fishing gear, scallop dredging, scallop dredging damage, scallop dredging impacts, seabed damage, seabed habitat destruction, seabed impacts, towed fishing gear habitat impacts
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Marine Environmental Impact Assessment
The relevant legislation for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in the marine environment can be tricky to keep up with. Within UK waters, licensing is now generally controlled by the Marine Management Organisation (MMO). The requirements for Marine licensing and Environmental … Continue reading
Posted in Seabed survey and monitoring
Tagged diver survey EIA, diver surveys EIA, EIA, EIA Devon, EIA environmental surveys, EIA Exeter, EIA marine surveys, Environmental Impact Assessment, environmental scoping, environmental statement, Environmental Statment, harbor EIA, harbour development EIA, harbour EIA, marine bio-images EIA, marine EIA, marine environmental impact assessemnt, marine environmental scoping, marine environmental statement, marine environmental surveys Cornwall, marine environmental surveys Devon, MMO, MMO EIA, MMO environmental statement, pipeline EIA, port EIA, seabed survey EIA, seabed survey environmental statement, underwater camera survey EIA, windfarm EIA
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