Evident Eclecticism.....

......from Coastwise members who showed their range of interests during the member's session, where topics ranged from scientific surveys to a poem on a horrendously wasteful by-catch during long-line fishing in Costa Rica.

Debbie showed the techniques and results of the regular Shoresearch surveys, whose data is loaded onto a UK database to allow monitoring of changes in fauna and flora.

Mark read some poems with a marine link from his new book "The Thermobaric Bomb" - the title 'watermarking', in his words, it to this year to highlight the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Poems included a beached whale at Hartland, the fishing in Costa Rica, plankton, and swimming in Corsican sea-caves.

Robert covered Greencliff beach and its marine life, and the contribution of James Hutton to the acceptance of the process of evolution, as credited to Charles Darwin.

Finally, Stan showed another form of survey - sampling from estuarine mud - how to do it and what can be found, There's a variety of worms, and also micro-life in the form of foraminifera, which really need a low-power microscope to be appreciated.