Waterside Natural History society November indoor meeting

Our indoor meeting held in St Andrews Hall Dibden Purlieu was a talk on the impact of human activities on Hampshire’s coast by Alan Inver. Many of the accompanied slides were taken from a light aircraft over twenty years ago and one of the cruise ship QE2 going between Hirst Spit and the Needles was particularly interesting. It was very informative to compare the coast as it was then to how it is now and to project what may happen in the future.
The area behind the sea wall at Keyhaven is now familiar to all of us as a nature reserve but a contract for gravel extraction preceded the reserve and cancelling the contract would have cost the council millions of pounds in lost revenue. A compromise was reached whereby the contractors contained the water drainage so that the scrapes and lagoons retained their water but gravel extraction went ahead. This has worked satisfactorily so far but the summer of 2009 saw most of the scrapes run dry.
A combination of the battle between English Nature with the local Council and global warming does not bode well. Apparently the inlet up Southampton water is one of the few unblocked estuaries on the south coast and with its gentle slope makes it an ideal place to measure the height of high tide. It goes without saying that the high tide is moving further upriver but I always understood that this was because the land was still sinking. It seems however that nowadays global warming has an effect too.
Many of us were particularly interested in the future of the reclaimed land in Dibden Bay and it was interesting to see a map of the proposals but nothing has been decided yet.Another concern is the future of the salt marshes which have shown dramatic reductions over the years and provide a valuable habitat for wildlife.