CoralPod™ update!

Strike three!

Three CoralPod™️ domes successfully struck from their moulds...phew!!! That’s 300, 400 & 500mm diam concrete cast domes. Next week we go for the big 650mm dome🤞. CoralPod™️ is a collaboration R&D project with The Coral Centre and Artecology looking at Coral Propagation, Coral Restoration and complex artificial reef habitat and refugia.

Cast concrete CoralPod™ domes after demoulding.

Close-up showing inside detail.

Three dimentional studio mock-up showing how CoralPod™ will look when colonised with mature corals.

More on CoralPod™

WILD GLADES A Shopping Centre With A Big Difference

The team at Arc Biodiversity & Climate explain here why The Glades Shopping Centre in Bromley and LaSalle Investment Managment are leading their industry sectors when it comes to innovative urban rewilding strategies and meaningful engament with communities.

Working on big world issues like biodiverstiy loss and climate change is no longer only the concern of enviromentalists and scientists.

See the trailer here -

For the full 8 minute version of this short documenatry hop over to our ‘Why Biodiversity’ page.

Turning the concrete tide – Artecology to feature in BBC Countryfile’s Coastalfile

Unless your TV is at the menders, you can’t have missed that this is a seminal week for the wild world.  Twin emergencies, Biodiversity and Climate Change are finally and fully making headlines… globally, the UN has been pushing the agenda with back-to-back conferences on both and meanwhile here in the UK, Defra have launched a consultation to make biodiversity net gain mandatory in development.  Forget popular plastics for a minute, the world is looking for ways to turn the concrete tide too now… at last.  Meanwhile (zooms in to the Isle of Wight), our small team of ecologists and artists have always been on it.  To find out how Artecology are making that tide work for wildlife, tune into BBC Countryfile this coming Sunday!

With presenter Margherita Taylor at the helm, the BBC Countryfile team joined us on the Solent and our Science Beach to find out more about the coastal side of our work, heading out with Ian Boyd to see how our Vertipools, artificial rockpools, at a Wightlink ferry port are bringing marine wildlife to blank walls, and finding out how artists Nigel and Hannah George employ paper-folding, materials expertise and hands-on sculptural making techniques to transform concrete into beautiful and bio-receptive habitat.

The BBC Countryfile team head out to our living seawall, our Wightlink Vertipools, with naturalist Ian Boyd.

So to see how tides could turn for the better and how art, science and ecology can rewild our world, make sure to watch BBC Countryfile this weekend…  BBC1 Sunday 9th December from 5.45pm https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bvgw3r.

Thanks to the brilliant teams at BBC Countryfile, Wightlink, the Royal Victoria Yacht Club and Bournemouth University!

Hannah George shows presenter Margherita Taylor how sand casting paper art can make space for nature in built environment.

Discovery Bay

It’s National Marine Week this week and so perfect timing for the start of our latest Discovery Bay research project which got under way today.  Our two latest work experience students, Christ the King A-level pupils, Lizzie and Alanah met us out on Horse Ledge, Shanklin at low tide early this morning starting with Rockpool ID practice, looking for, and discovering patches, of the rare seaweed Peacock’s tail, a key conservation target.  We also spotted a Hairy crab, another rare find so great to see it at home at Horse Ledge.  We walked on to Hope Beach, looking at the distribution of sandstone reef features before taking a quick look at the ongoing PhD research with Glasgow University on Hope Beach groyne where together we’re experimenting with man-made textures and their effects on marine colonisation.

Alanah and Lizzie’s task this summer is to help Artecology and Arc map the reef features in each of the 54 individual bays along the defended coast of the Bay, identifying any areas of Peacock’s tail as they go.

This latest student project illustrates again how our homebase, Sandown Bay provides tremendous opportunities for higher education research into marine ecology, coastal management and big global issues, while on a local level, it helps Island students find topics of interest and inspiration close to home.  Both Lizzie and Alanah are looking at their university choices as we speak and it’s brilliant that the natural world and Sandown Bay can shape, spark and inform their decisions.

What is The 5th International Marine Conservation Conference?

According to the organisers of the 5th IMCC, those active in conservation of the world’s oceans must go beyond science and use policy and management to catalyze effective and positive change. The Society for Conservation Biology's ‘International Marine Conservation Congress’ (IMCC) in Borneo this week will bring together conservation professionals and students from across the planet to help develop new and powerful tools to further marine conservation science and policy. This year Artecology will be represented by Dr Alice Hall from Bournemouth University whose PhD included a comprehensive study of our Vertipool system. Alice’s talk at the IMCC5 in Borneo will suggest that novel green infrastructure engineering techniques can mitigate for habitat loss caused be sea level rise by creating manmade habitable intertidal structures.

Find out more about IMCC5 here https://conbio.org/mini-sites/imcc5/