Proudly supporting the Marine Conservation Society

We are proud to announce that holidaycottages.co.uk is supporting the Marine Conservation Society in its vital work on a group of collaborative UK-wide climate and ocean resilience projects. While much of the sea’s inhabitants are hidden underwater, they are a vitally important part of our planet, and they need our help to ensure a thriving future. With our coastal regions being such popular holiday destinations, and over 250,000 people holidaying by the sea with us each year (one for each known species found in the ocean!), we know the importance of protecting and preserving our coastlines for years to come.

Unsung heroes of the sea like horse mussels, pink sea fans, kelp, and quahogs are vital for maintaining marine biodiversity and ecosystem stability, acting as essential habitats and food sources for numerous marine species. They are vital for a healthy marine ecosystem.

Skip to:

• What is the Marine Conservation Society?
• Ocean resilience projects
• How can you get involved?

What is the Marine Conservation Society?

The Marine Conservation Society is an organisation that sees scientists, campaigners and volunteers from across a broad range of backgrounds coming together to help secure a more sustainable future for our seas. With a wide range of campaigns including reducing litter from the source, preventing microfibres from entering the sea, and saving our seagrass and kelp – essential underwater species that absorb CO₂ – the educational messages that the Marine Conservation Society shares are essential, and we’re proud to support the charity by spreading the word.

What is our commitment to the Marine Conservation Society?

We are a company member of the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) and will be supporting its initiatives throughout the year by sharing information and opportunities to get involved with our staff, guests and owners. Celebrating the beauty of our natural environment is something that is ingrained into everything we do, and we’re very aware that we need to protect and preserve our marine habitats for future generations to enjoy them in the same way that we do today.

The Marine Conservation Society has already helped educate us by running a number of inspiring sessions with our team, thereby heightening our passion for protecting our planet, and we’re really looking forward to moving further into strengthening our relationship in the coming months and years.

Ocean resilience projects

During our continued support, we will contribute to several collaborative UK-wide climate and ocean resilience projects. The focus of these projects is to recover both species and habitats that can deliver the fastest solutions to the climate and nature emergency. These could include pink sea fan coral, seagrass, native oysters, kelp forests, horse mussel reefs and ocean quahog.

Photo credit: Alex Mustard

Working together to protect seagrass

Seagrass is a flowering plant that lives underwater around the UK’s coast in shallow, sheltered locations on the seabed. It forms marine meadows that work as highly productive ecosystems and biodiversity hotspots. These seagrass meadows are known as the 'lungs of the ocean'. 

They are a vital natural component for sustaining life beneath the waves for millions of sea creatures and plants. Just 1 square metre generates 10 litres of oxygen per day through photosynthesis. Therefore, seagrass produces more oxygen than an equivalent area of rainforest over the same length of time. 

Working together to protect kelp

Kelp forests are effective carbon sinks, rapidly sequestering CO₂ in their biomass and transferring it to the ocean floor, thus mitigating climate change. In fact, a kelp forest can absorb 20 times more carbon dioxide than the same area of land forest. Our annual contribution could help to protect and recover up to 1ha of the UK’s vital kelp beds.

Kelp also provides a habitat, nursery, and feeding ground for species like cuttlefish, seahorses, lobster, sea bream, and bass. The water around these species is kept clean by the kelp, which absorbs excess nutrients, and coastal erosion is reduced when the forest absorbs the power of the ocean's waves.

Working together to protect quahogs

No, not the town where Peter Griffin lives! We're talking about the bivalve molluscs that live in sandy and muddy seabeds in offshore areas of the ocean. As seabed mud is one of the biggest carbon stores in the world, this habitat where quahogs live must be protected.

If left undisturbed, most quahogs can live up to 200 years, with one individual reported as being over 500 years old - one of the oldest animals ever recorded. Clams and molluscs have a slow growth rate and this, coupled with their long lifespan, means that quahogs find it difficult to recover from damage and destruction. Our supports hopes to mitigate any disturbances to these vital mud seabeds. 

Working together to protect native oysters

Another cleaner of our waters is the native oyster. An individual oyster can filter 200 litres of water every single day and, through this process, remove pollutants, chemicals and particulates. The importance of the part these molluscs play in the health of our marine ecosystems cannot be understated. Furthering that thought, they play a vital role as ocean ecosystem engineers, forming rock-like reefs that provide shelter for a variety of marine life. 

Many creatures will hide from predators in oyster reefs and may find food in the form of other small marine critters. These reefs provide a nursery habitat for juvenile species and could double biodiversity over the course of a decade, with crabs, mussels, snails and herrings a few of the animals that call these reefs home. With protection, these native oysters could reach a natural old age of 25–30 years.

Image credit: MCS and Billy Arthur

Working together to protect horse mussels

So-called because they are quite a lot larger than other mussels, horse mussels are another mollusc that provides essential water filtration around the beds that are found below the low water mark. Growing up to 20cm in length, this type of mussel can capture and store carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. 

When juvenile, they can provide food for crabs but once they get to 6cm, they are generally considered safe from predators and can live up to 50 years. Horse mussel beds provide a solid foundation for soft corals, tubeworms, barnacles, sea firs, sea mats and seaweeds, and can then provide a habitat for brittlestars, crustaceans, worms, and many small fish.

Working together to protect pink sea fans

Speaking of soft coral, pink sea fans are a type of coldwater and temperate soft coral. Incredibly important to marine health, pink sea fans act as a gauge by which we can measure the well-being of the habitats surrounding them. If populations of the coral drop, it can indicate that there have been significant changes to water quality, temperature or other environmental factors. 

When the marine health is good, their branch-like structures provide shelter and breeding grounds for numerous invertebrates, fish, and microorganisms, especially plankton which are brought to the coral to feed during strong water movements.

Working together to protect cold-water coral

Found on the seabeds off the coast of Scotland, cold-water reefs are made up of thousands of individual anemone-like creatures that share a hard skeleton. They can be found at great depths, sometimes at 2,000 metres below the surface where the sunlight cannot penetrate and can provide a habitat for many deep-water marine life who look to the reefs for shelter and food.

Cold-water coral grows much more slowly than its tropical counterpart; sometimes only 4mm to 25mm each year. Despite this slow growth, they can persist for millennia with some species living to hundreds of thousands of years old. That's why it's so heartbreaking when these reefs are damaged through unsustainable deep-sea fishing practices and the pipelines and cables. 

How can you get involved?

There are so many ways that you can get involved with the Marine Conservation Society’s fantastic work, and here are just a few of them: