Survey run by Southampton Oceanography Centre. All these records relate to "Rowe, Sheader, Jensen (1990) The infauna of the Handfast Point maerl bed" A copy of the report is held at English Nature (Dorset Team).
This report concentrates solely on the benthic infauna of an area of live maerl in Poole Bay. The maerl bed is concentrated off Handfast Point at the southern end of Studland Bay. A line of 9 sites leading from the maerl bed was used to determine the relationship between the amount of maerl and the composition of the animal communities sampled. A single benthic sample was taken from each of these sites using a Day grab. N.B. No station 26. In addition, ten grab samples were taken from a single site (G3) in the maerl bed in an attempt to collect a greater number of the rarer species.The Day grab sampled an area of 0.1m2. All samples were washed on a 0.5mm sieve and the species retained on the sieve were identified in the lab. Live maerl separated from the samples was dried in an oven at 70oC, then weighed to the nearest 0.1g. Measurements of dead maerl present in individual samples were approximated by sieving through a 1.0mm mesh and removing the remaining small stones before drying as above. This report was originally produced by G.A. Rowe as a dissertation. Through a NCC contribution, the species list was expanded and confirmed and the report up-dated with the assistance of the other authors. The datum of the Lat/longs was not stated in the report, so has been assigned as OSGB in this database.