Customer: Countryside Council for Wales
Location: Skomer Island, Wooltack Point
Requirement: A CCTV solution that provides all weather, day and night coverage to help conservation officers protect wildlife, monitor shipping and provide guidance to visitors on weather conditions.
Solution: Mobotix M24 IP cameras and Network Attached Storage
Services: Installation and configuration of cameras, NAS and training
Customer’s View: “The implementation by the team from Ecl-ips was extremely professional and the cameras have worked flawlessly ever since.” Mr Mark Burton – CCW Marine Conservation Officer
Ecl-ips helps Countryside Council with innovative CCTV system
Ecl-ips were carefully selected for their monitoring expertise by the Countryside Council for Wales for use on the island of Skomer. The innovative CCTV technology will support CCW’s remit as the Government’s statutory advisor on sustaining natural beauty, wildlife and the opportunity for outdoor enjoyment in Wales and its inshore waters.
Sitting roughly one kilometre off the coast of southwest Wales, the Island of Skomer is surrounded by the regions only Marine Conservation Zone. The area is best known for its large breeding seabird population, its Grey seal colony and for many southern species of soft corals and other marine life. The island itself is a National Nature Reserve as well as Site of Special Scientific Interest.
For Mark Burton, CCW Marine Conservation Officer for Skomer, keeping an eye on the Marine Conservation Zone which is only accessible by boat can be a challenge; especially in rough weather. Burton’s duties include maintaining the site’s marine biological monitoring and weather station. CCW collates data on chlorophyll, PH and oxygen from probes on the seabed of the Skomer Marine Nature Reserve which is used as part of a UK wide research project on climate change.
The system provides all weather, day and night coverage to help conservation officers protect wildlife, monitor shipping and provide guidance to visitors on weather conditions.
Marine Conservation Officers also need to manage human activity, so that it is in line with the conservation objectives of the site. “We also need to make sure that illegal fishing does not occur within the protected area but with limited staff, it was felt that a remote, high resolution camera would be a major benefit,” explains Burton.
Based on a requirement for extreme reliability and ability to work in all-weather conditions, CCW selected a MOBOTIX solution from Ecl-ips; a highly regarded Advanced MOBOTIX Partner. The MOBOTIX M24-SEC cameras are installed within a converted coast guard hut on the island and provide wide angle coverage across several key locations such as protected scallop beds and wildlife areas.
Burton accesses the system via a fibre optic link and all footage is recorded for 10 days.
“Our main goal for the system was to help raise awareness and to help protect the island,”
explains Burton,
“The system also tags movement events and can generate an alert whenever a vessel comes into the area of coverage – this is useful for monitoring any illegal fishing within the area.”
The real-time video has been made available to the public through the CCW website and also provides a guide for groups preparing to scuba dive or sail in and around the island.
“The implementation by the team from Ecl-ips was extremely professional and the cameras have worked flawlessly ever since”
Burton adds. The installation is the first of its kind within a Marine Conservation Zone but Burton believes that the use of innovative visual technologies can help to raise awareness and help protect wildlife.
Download the Skomer Island case study PDF