{short description of image} Conservation
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 September "99


We will be taking part in our annual beach clean in a few days time and now seems an appropriate time to mention that we may find less oil on our beaches in future if a new plant, for which plans have already been drawn up, is built at Falmouth. A £5 million oil-fired power plant is planned at Falmouth Docks, which they claim will create no noise or pollution. The mini-power station, 5000 square feet in size with a 90ft chimney, is planned within the docks complex and will take waste oil from ships and garages to generate electricity. The 10 megawatt power station would provide enough power to serve Falmouth, Truro and more, and does not require planning permission because of legislation which allows shipping related development. Some of the aims of the generator are to stop ships illegally dumping oil at sea, encourage more shipping into Falmouth and save the present cost of sending a tanker load of oil a week by road for processing in Wales.

In my report of October 1997 you may remember that I mentioned that Silja Swaby a marine biologist at Great White Sharkthe M.B.A. Plymouth predicted that the Great White Shark would arrive in British Waters within 10 years, and now her prediction may well have been proved correct, for anglers on a Padstow boat, the Blue Fox, while fishing for Porbeagle shark on August 24th saw a 15ft shark, estimated weight 1500 lbs, close to their boat, which they were all convinced was a Great White, This may be confirmed when photographs taken by one of the anglers are developed. If confirmed it would be the first record for British Waters, the nearest previous sighting being in south Biscay, but they do occur in waters of similar temperature on the other side of the Atlantic.

There have been no reported sightings of Bottlenosed dolphins Basking Sharkduring August and only 7 reports of Basking Sharks, although three of them were of quite large numbers, for instance 63 off Porthgwarra on the 1st August, 86 between the Longships and the Brisons on the 2nd and 30 to 40 off Tintagel on the 11th, the other reports were of single sharks, one of which breached and shook itself violently when high out of the water before belly-flopping back into the sea off Penberth on the 3rd. I am however expecting further Basking Shark reports for August. Two Sunfish were seen well out in the bay and another off Porthgwarra on the 1st, and another well off Mousehole on the 3rd.

PorpoiseA Leatherback Turtle was seen off the north Cornwall coast early in the month. a pod of about 5 Porpoises were seen near the Brisons on the 2nd and 8 Common dolphins off Gwennap Head on the 20th. Unusual visitors have been a 7-gilled shark Heptranchais perlo near the Isles of Scilly, on the 5th, only the 2nd British record, (the first being off the Lizard in 1985) and a pair of White Beaked Dolphins in Looe Bay on the 16th. You may remember that a White Beaked Dolphin carcass was found beached last month. There are about 6 previous records.

I remind you of our beach clean on Friday evening (17th Nov), which is of course a small part of a national event. Last year nationally ft was a great success, over 3300 volunteers turned up, 257 beaches were cleaned covering more than 166 km. 2960 bags of rubbish was collected weighing 25627 kg. Total number of items collected was over 322000, of which plastic was 56.6%, over 182000 items of plastic.
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Conservation Officer Raymond Dennis