– MHWESG Summer Surveys in 2020

There were rumblings in the months before the March corona virus lockdown that 2020 might be a challenging year for all kinds of reasons. From the perspective of the MHWESG, planned field work projects were looking doubtful. The first scheduled one was the annual summer Shelduck survey due to take place in June and July. This survey had had an unbroken record of 29 years of consecutive surveys. The second scheduled project was the rocky shore monitoring, carried out every 3 years.

The Shelduck surveys are usually carried out by boat, a valued service provided by the Port of Milford Haven. Social distancing rules were in place however at the time of the first survey in June, which meant that using a boat was not possible. Fortunately our surveyor, Jane Hodges, has had previous experience of being deprived of a survey vessel when in 2015 she had to carry out the survey on foot due to boat engine failure. The effort that year of working out access and viewing locations along the estuary to survey Shelduck using binoculars and a telescope were dusted off and reused in 2020. Luckily the lockdown had lifted sufficiently by June to allow travel more than 5 miles from home for work purposes. The same approach was used for the July survey. Not surprisingly it took over twice as long to survey the estuary and the conclusion afterwards was that using a boat is much preferred option!

The rocky shore surveys have to be carried out during Spring Tides at approximately the same time of year – in 2020, this meant late July/early August. At this stage, corona restrictions permitted travel for work purposes. As both surveyors for this project were local marine biologists, John Archer-Thomson and Steve Morrell, the issue of accommodation did not exist. Each surveyor worked with their wives as a pair, each pair surveying separate heights on the shores, using separate equipment. Another year of rocky shore data in the bag.