Bailiwick seabird images used in international initiative

Two years of pictures captured by a wildlife camera off Guernsey are being used in the Seabirdwatch project.

Agriculture, Countryside and Land Management Services set up the camera to capture photos at Lihoumel, a small island to the west of Lihou.

The time-lapse images observed a colony of shags on the island to "provide an indication of the health" of the world's wider marine ecosystem.

Guernsey and Herm support more than 1% of the population of European shags.

Lihou is a designated Ramsar Site, which marks it as a place of international importance.

The Seabirdwatch initiative is led by Oxford University, University College Cork and Oxford Brookes University with research partners from across the North Atlantic, including the UK, Ireland, Svalbard, Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

It aims to use the photos to monitor seabird populations.

Emily Coule, natural environment officer for the States of Guernsey, said the photos would "help researchers in several areas", and allow the public to "view otherwise unseen parts of our environment".

She said: "It's fantastic to see the images being published as part of this international programme.

"Using cameras is a clever and cost-effective way of improving our understanding of seabirds whilst avoiding causing disturbance to wildlife."

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