National Marine Week is the Wildlife Trusts' annual celebration of the sea - shining a spotlight on the habitats, wildlife, and people that make our marine environment so special. This year, we are celebrating ‘Secrets of our Seabeds’, and there’s no better place to start than our shoreline! From beach cleans and litter surveys, to cetacean surveys and shore searches, volunteers across Durham Wildlife Trust and our partnership projects have taken part in a wide range of marine citizen science activities throughout the week, all in celebration of our seas! 

Beneath our feet, beyond the tide - by Caitlin Elwin

Our shores may look clean at first glance, but a closer look often reveals signs of long-term marine pollution - a powerful reminder that a lot of rubbish is hidden in the environment, with even more remaining in the ocean.  

Volunteers joined Durham Wildlife Trust and Heritage Coast Partnership, to remove litter and record the types of waste we found, as part of ongoing survey efforts. We started off the week at Crimdon, where volunteers, families and members of the community helped search the strandline for marine litter. From rope, and fishing wire, to bottle caps, cigarette ends and disposable BBQs, every piece collected tells a wider story about how our actions on land reach the ocean floor. Our fantastic team of volunteers collected a total of 23 bags of rubbish from Crimdon beach in less than two hours; three bags of which were gathered within our dedicated 100m survey area. Within this marked zone alone, over 300 items were recorded, weighing a total of 4kg – nearly 70% of these items were made of plastic. Over time, this plastic breaks down into smaller fragments known as microplastics, which pose a serious threat to the marine environment. Many marine species, including birds and fish, ingest these microplastics as they feed, and worryingly, they can also make their way up the food chain. 

Later in the week, our efforts moved to Seaham, cleaning both Seaham Hall Beach and Red Acre beach. Volunteers collected 808 items, weighing 18.5kg from our 100m survey area at Red Acre beach alone. Once again, plastic items made up the majority of the litter recorded in our survey areas across both beaches: bottles, food packaging, bags, bottle tops, and small fragments. According to Marine Conservation Society survey categories, much of this recorded litter was estimated to be sourced from public use (25%) and fishing activity (15.5%).  

During National Marine Week 2025, our dedicated volunteers removed 52 bags of litter from local beaches. Marine pollution remains one of the biggest threats to our oceans’ health; plastic is found almost everywhere, leading to entanglement or ingestion by marine wildlife. Each piece of litter removed is a reminder that protecting our oceans and seabeds starts with the care we show to our beaches. A huge thank you to everyone who took part to help keep our beaches and seas litter-free for both people and wildlife! 

You can get involved by volunteering, attending a beach clean or one of our events. All upcoming beach cleans and engagement events are listed on our website. Click the links below to find out more.

Upcoming events

Volunteer

Donate to support our beach cleans

Secrets exposed - by Blair Watson

At low tide, the secrets of the seabed are revealed, and yet, day after day we walk past this stunning world at our doorstep and pay it no mind. Rocky intertidal zones, that is rocky areas of the seabed, exposed at low tide, contain multitudes. Life can be found here in a dizzying array of forms, and with Shoresearch, the Wildlife Trust’s national marine survey, we get the chance to delve into this vibrant and enigmatic environment. Over the first three days of Marine Week, surveys were conducted at Roker, Craster and Blackhall Rocks, unveiling the algaes, fish, crustaceans and more that call these areas home.  

This survey is critical for the Wildlife Trusts in being able to get a full and accurate picture as to the state of our coasts, and how the life around them is faring year after year. Being an island nation, we have a vast area to cover, and so it is only with the support of enthusiastic volunteers that we can truly build up this image of our intertidal zones.  

Shoresearch is not suitable for our younger nature enthusiasts, and so the Tuesday of the first week of Marine Week saw us partnering with Northumberland Wildlife Trust to go rock pooling, where we trained our younger enthusiasts on how best to explore our rocky shore and identify various species, whilst respecting the life in the area, highlighting how to explore our coasts safely, both for us, and the life within. We had a fantastic session, discovering pipefish, lobsters, velvet crab, butterfish, scorpion fish and more! With a spring tide, and a beautiful warm day, it was truly a huge success, and we had many a smiling face as the session ended, going home with a better understanding of these important rocky areas. 

Stronger Shores has been working with artists across Northumberland over the past few months, partnering with Dovecot Street Arts, and on the Wednesday on Marine Week, we saw a major milestone in this project, taking more than 20 artists to Lindisfarne where they were able to come face to face with seagrass for the first time. Seagrass is scarce in the UK, having been depleted by disease, human activity and the impacts of climate change, and so we have been working with artists to consider why this species is important to their area. Working with the artists, this took the form of still life painting of various commercial fish species, with seagrass acting as an important habitat and nursery site for many commercially important species. This visit to Lindisfarne highlighted just how important it is for people to experience these species first-hand, being able to come up close to a species that, whilst looking small and humble from the surface, is in fact a titan of the seabed, giving us safe, clean and healthy coasts... 

Sea-ing the cetaceans - by Dorinda Kealoha

All along our Tyne to Tees coastline, if we are lucky and the weather and sea conditions are good, we can often see the cetaceans that visit our coastline. Cetaceans are mammals like us, except that they live in the sea, such as dolphins, porpoises and whales. 

In the North East, during the summer months especially, we can expect to see bottlenose and white-beaked dolphins, harbour porpoises and even the minke whale, swimming and feeding along our shores. Sometimes, bottlenose dolphins can give amazing acrobatic shows as they jump and play, somersaulting and splashing in the water. 

During Marine Week, more than 80 people joined us to watch and have a go at surveying bottlenose dolphins and harbour porpoises at three public Cetacean Watch events, funded by the Marine Conservation Society’s Sea-Changers Grant.  

Our Cetacean Watch events take place at key coastal sites in County Durham, South Tyneside, Hartlepool and Sunderland. These sessions aim to engage local communities with a national citizen science project that we’re delivering in partnership with SeaWatch Foundation, where local people can help us to identify and record cetaceans during a guided survey. 

Cetacean Watch events are on all year round, for more information and to see if one’s happening near you, click the link below.

 Upcoming events