The Chesil website has been expanded with a new sub-site on the Hamm Beach. This area will be expanded further over the next few weeks. The Hamm Beach area covers how the beach was formed, recreational use of the beach, its designations and includes a full list of plant species that can be found on the beach. Other pages will be added as soon as the necessary photographs have been taken.

Take a look by going to the usual home page - www.chesilbeach.org, then clicking on 'Hamm Beach' in the text or selecting from the fly-out main menu.

We saw 45 people come to the first low tide walk of the year in early April. This was one of the lowest tides of the year and we were pleased to find lots if marine invertebrates exposed. Bearing in mind it was a bitterly cold day the turn out was stunning! The hot tea and chocolate back at the Tea Cabin was great!

Last Saturday a smaller group went out on a warmer walk to learn more intricate details about Chesil Beach itself, its history and inhabitants.

We would like to thank everyone who participated in last weekends litter pick. Thankfully the good weather brought out over 30 volunteers who picked up more than 55 bags of rubbish.

The brown filamentous algae is now growing very quickly and it will be necessary to clean the underwater camera every week from now until early July. Cleaning on a two week cycle corresponding with spring low tides makes cleaning fairly easy through the winter. However, the intermediate clean corresponds with a neap high tide and up to 2 metres more water over the camera. This makes cleaning more challenging!

The underwater camera was cleaned to day in the middle of a hail shower, which made life interesting. Underwater visibility was only moderate and the water temperature was 10.0C. A large number of two-spot gobies are now in residence in the camera pontoon and one grey mullet was also seen. The algae and sponges are all very colourful at this time of year with lots of greens, reds, and browns.

On the walk back the scurvy grass bloom is coming to an end while the thrift is just beginning its main spring bloom.