Home Offshore Estuary Pontoon Habitat Mapping Index

Welcome to our website!
This displays the summarised work of Group 2 analysing the biological, chemical and physical data in the Fal Estuary and offshore in the English Channel from the 3rd July -11th July 2017.
This survey forms the latest entry in a data set spanning over 10 years all collected by Oceanography and Marine Biology students from The University of Southampton, UK.

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Overview of Falmouth

The eighteen kilometere long river Fal meets the ocean between Pendennis Point (Falmouth) and St Anthony Head (Roseland Peninsula) in  the south of Cornwall. The estuary (also known as Carrick Roads) is a ria -  a river valley that became flooded as result of melting glaciers during the last ice age. At its deepest, the Fal estuary reaches thirty four metres and has a width of at least a mile along its entire length. Six main tributaries (including the Truro River) and twenty eight minor creeks and rivers (such as Restronguet Creek and the Penryn River) feed the estuary (Cornwall Guide, 2017).

As the third largest natural harbour in the world, the Fal estuary is crucial for industry and for the local ecology. It provides a number of valuable habitats such as mudflats and saltmarshes and is home to protected maerl beds and eel grass which are nursery locations for many other species. The site has been deemed a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) (Cornwall Guide, 2017; Joint Nature Conservation Committee, 2017; Projects Exeter, 2006a). However, there have still been issues of pollution such as the abandonment and subsequent flooding of the Wheal Jane mine in 1992 (Bowen et al. 1998,, Hunt and Howard 1994; Projects Exeter, 2006b). Following this, the Fal was reported as the most metal polluted estuary in the United Kingdom (Bryan and Langston, 1992).

The importance of the Fal as a unique habitat and the risks that it faces due to anthropogenic pollution mean that careful monitoring of its conditions is vital in order to protect and conserve vulnerable species.

Disclaimer: All the opinions expressed in this site are that of Group 2 and not necessarily the University of Southampton or the National Oceanography Centre.

Falmouth Field course 2017

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