Uninvited alien species have been taking over Ramsey.

But, have no fear, the island’s very own Men In Black are on the case.

For many years, the Manx Wildlife trust have been monitoring the number of invasive shell fish in Ramsey bay and, last Saturday, they held an annual survey to keep an eye on the numbers.

With help from a team of enthusiastic volunteers, Lara Howe, the Marine Officer from the Manx Wildlife Trust, scoured the wall of Ramsey breakwater looking for two species in particular, namely the Darwin’s barnacle and the pacific oyster.

’We had volunteers looking at barnacle species, and identifying which ones were native barnacles, and which were the invasive Darwin barnacle,’ said Lara.

’You can tell which is which from the number of plates they have on their shells. The native ones have six while the Darwin has four.’

Ramsey bay has been designated a marine nature reserve area, and is inmportatnt that the trust knows what species there are living in the seas that could disrupt the native species.

Using a grid, known as a quadrat, areas of the wall were painstakingly examined and the numbers of the different types of shellfish were recorded, providing information that will ultimately go towards the marine bio-Security plan, which is being produced by DEFA.

’Another species we are keeping an eye on is the Pacific oyster.

We were counting how many there were around the harbour wall.

’It is important to know if there are large amounts of these oysters, as they can form large beds on the sea floor, and disrupt the native marine life in the area.

’Thankfully, it looks like the population of the oysters are dropping.

’They may have been a colony of fish that moved up here somehow, but the waters around Ramsey aren’t warm enough for them to breed in, so the colony is one that is growing old and dying off gradually.’

Lara said she was pleased with the results of the survey, and that she was impressed with the number of volunteers that turned out to help examine the area.

’We had around 18 people come and help take part this time, which is probably the most we’ve had.

’It’s good that people are interested in the marine life around the island, no matter how small they are.’

For more information about the Ramsey Bay Marine nature reserve, or on any other aspect of Manx marine life, visit manxwt.org.uk