The Deep hits major milestone in native biodiversity recordings

Data recorded around the parameters of The Deep’s site and surrounding car park contributes to the British and Irish Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA) Spotted on Site campaign, a collaboration with iNaturalist UK and the National Biodiversity Network (NBN). Spotted on Site is a campaign whereby staff and volunteers from member sites utilise the iNaturalist app to record native species found around their sites, providing easy-to-use data which feeds into projects across the UK, Europe, and the world. Any observations recorded also provide a valuable insight into just how biodiverse BIAZA member sites can be.

The Deep are proud to have been the first aquarium to sign up to BIAZA’s Spotted on Site campaign. To date, over 260 different species have been recorded around our site from just 21 observers, which is a fantastic accomplishment and reflects just how diverse wildlife can be even within small, urbanised parameters. Recent observations around the site have included rare species such as the Convolvulus Hawk-moth (Agrius convolvuli) and even a Hairy dragonfly (Brachytron pratense), which is the first observation of the species in the area to be recorded on the iNaturalist app.

Senior Aquarist at The Deep, Phill Robinson, is noted as the top observer and species recorder for The Deep in BIAZA’s Spotted on Site campaign. Commenting on the recent news, Phill said:

“Hitting 1,000 observations is a huge milestone for the Spotted on Site campaign, especially when considering the size of our boundary and the fact that this is largely buildings and car park.”

“This highlights that wildlife can even be found in heavily urbanised areas if they are managed in a way to help promote biodiversity. This figure also currently places us in the top third of the participating BIAZA collections’ leaderboard, which is quite an achievement for an indoor attraction with a comparatively small footprint.”

Katy Duke, Chief Executive Officer at The Deep, said: “The Deep has been working hard this year to continue encouraging nature to our site, through new projects such as our biodiversity bog garden and bug hotels, as well as continuing to support the existing Weeds for Wildlife campaign.”

“We are delighted that these projects have been successful in providing habitats for a variety of native species, and that the Spotted on Site observations reflect this.”

BIAZA are holding an upcoming Bioblitz event between the 14th to the 20th October 2024. This event sees BIAZA members competing for the most observations of plant and animal species recorded during these dates. The Deep would like to encourage visitors and volunteers to get involved in the event by downloading the iNaturalist app and logging the species found around our site. More details on how you can get involved in the Autumn Bioblitz event can be found here: https://www.thedeep.co.uk/biaza-spotted-site