Marine Environment and Wildlife
Cumbrae has a marine climate and can experience gale force winds from the Atlantic at any time of year; these westerly or south-westerly gales can be severe and destructive. However, while the west of the island might be in the throes of a 70 mph gale, the sheltered east side facing Largs can seem like a duckpond.
Local wildlife includes owls, polecats, rabbits, Common Kestrels and the occasional Golden Eagle and Sea Eagle, as well as a large seabird population: fulmars, cormorants, oystercatchers and many more. Other marine life includes seals, basking sharks, porbeagle sharks and dolphins.
The well respected University Marine Biological Station, Millport (UMBSM) is run by the Universities of Glasgow and London. Founded in 1885 by Sir John Murray and David Robertson, it is just outside the town and has an interesting curriculum and research programme which attracts UK and foreign students throughout the academic year. A Museum and Aquarium is open to visitors. In May 2003, in the presence of Princess Anne, the station took delivery of the Macduff-built, 22-metre marine Research Vessel Aora. UMBSM also functions as a Met Office Weather Station and Admiralty Tide Monitor.
Read more about this topic: Great Cumbrae
Famous quotes containing the words marine, environment and/or wildlife:
“People run away from the name subsidy. It is a subsidy. I am not afraid to call it so. It is paid for the purpose of giving a merchant marine to the whole country so that the trade of the whole country will be benefitted thereby, and the men running the ships will of course make a reasonable profit.... Unless we have a merchant marine, our navy if called upon for offensive or defensive work is going to be most defective.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“... several generations of slum environment will produce a slum heredity ...”
—Albion Fellows Bacon (1865–1933)
“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)