Participants were given plenty of practical things to do at Manx Wildlife Trust’s Marine Life on the Move workshop, held at Kirk Braddan Church, on Saturday.

The trust’s biodiversity education officer, Dawn Dickens, set them a number of exercises which graphically illustrated how marine life can navigate a course to where it needs to be.

She said: ’We all think of birds migrating but we have a lot of marine species that move around, sometimes travelling thousands of miles in search of food.

’The European eel is a champion long distance swimmer at 4,000 miles and basking sharks and Atlantic salmon move around too.’

Dawn explained that the European eel and the Atlantic salmon navigate by the taste of the water so cups of different tasting water had been put out for the groups to try and see if they would be able to find their way around the high seas in this way.

Some species navigate by magnetic field so Dawn had also laid out a course for participants to navigate by compass, around Kirk Braddan Church, to find the marine species hidden at the end of it.

Manx Wildlife Trust works to protect the island’s wildlife and habitats.

As the island’s leading nature conservation charity, it works hard to protect the island’s precious, unique environment, both on the land and in the seas that surround us.

The trust holds frequent educational events and workshops and you can find out about future events on its Facebook page or at www.manxwt.og.uk.