What is the SEA LIFE TRUST

The SEA LIFE TRUST is a registered charity (no. 1175859) working globally to protect our world’s oceans and the amazing marine life that lives within them.

Our vision is of a world where our oceans are healthy, properly protected and full of diverse life.

We champion the need for plastic-free oceans and an end to over-exploitation of marine life through our global projects and campaigns, as well as at our marine animal sanctuaries.

What We Do

The SEA LIFE TRUST is a registered charity (no. 1175859) working globally to protect the world’s oceans and the amazing marine life that lives within them.

Our vision is of a world where our seas are healthy, protected and full of diverse life.

SEA LIFE TRUST SANCTUARIES

The SEA LIFE TRUST owns and operates two marine wildlife sanctuaries.

We created the world’s first Beluga Whale Sanctuary off the south coast of Iceland in 2020. Our Cornish Seal Sanctuary in Gweek in the UK has been rescuing and rehabilitating sick and injured seal pups before releasing them back into the wild for over 60 years.

OUR WIDER WORK

We work across the world to support practical local projects to protect marine wildlife and their habitats, alongside working on conservation campaigns to effect long-lasting change on a global scale.

Working in partnership

Here at The Seahorse Trust, we work in partnership with Nature and so many organisations around the world. One special partner is the SEA LIFE TRUST

Working with their amazing team of volunteers under the guidance of Chris Brown, Director of Conservation, Science and Education for SEA LIFE TRUST we are surveying and protecting seahorses in Weymouth Bay.

Chris and the team work with The Seahorse Trust and our volunteers conducting surveys in Weymouth looking at and studying the seahorses there.

Amazing diving team

The joint project involves some amazing volunteers, including our youngest licenced volunteer, Chris’s daughter Chloe (In the right picture in the middle). She was 15 when she became the youngest licensed seahorse surveyor in the country.

Like so many successful projects, the volunteers are the backbone of our work and without them, we could not do so much.

So what is going on?

The SEA LIFE TRUST and The Seahorse Trust have come together as a partnership to study the seahorses in the Weymouth Bay area.

The work we are undertaking is a part of the British Seahorse Survey, in which we have 5 sites to date studying the seahorses and the habitat they live in.

Week after week the teams of volunteers go back to the various sites, look for the seahorses and photograph and record them, their location, their habitat and anything else we can measure.

This long-term study allows us to help preserve and conserve them.

CLICK THE IMAGE ON THE RIGHT TO SEE A VIDEO OF SOME OF OUR

JOINT SURVEY WORK

Survey work under licence

All of our work is being conducted under licence from the Marine Management Organisation because seahorses here in the UK are a protected species.

We are very proud to say that The Seahorse Trust achieved full legal protection for both the Spiny Seahorse (Hippocampus guttulatus) and the Short Snouted Seahorse (Hippocampus hippocampus) in 2008.

This was done as a result of data held on the National Seahorse Database set up and administered as the World Seahorse Database by The Seahorse Trust.

It is only because of joint projects like this one with the SEA LiIFE TRUST that we know so much about seahorses and why we need to conserve and preserve them into the future.

SEA LIFE TRUST Ambassador

Andy Torbet

Andy is a professional cave diver, freediver, underwater explorer, stuntman, filmmaker, writer, TV presenter and massive seahorse fan, who we are proud to say came diving with us to make a film for the SEA LIFE TRUSTt.

To date, he has presented 21 television series for BBC1, BBC2, Children’s BBC, Discovery US and History, written hundreds of articles for magazines like FHM, Men’s Fitness, ScubaDiver, Climber and Skydive and newspapers including The Mail on Sunday and The Telegraph.  He has also published a book- ‘Extreme Adventures’ and performed stunts on famous movies, including James Bond ‘No Time To Die’.

After completing a degree in Zoology and Ecology, he went on to be an accomplished and respected underwater explorer with a high level of skill and experience in deep, technical and cave diving which has taken him all over the globe.

Growing up in the Highlands of Scotland he has always loved the outdoors and especially the realms which lay beneath the surface. His background in zoology and diving have combined to give him a love of aquatic wildlife, having dived with whales, sharks, seals, turtles and more, and a strong desire to see the underwater world protected.