About Us

We carry out work for the Welsh governments as well as being a partner agency in the Cetacean Stranding Investigation Programme (CSIP).

We help coordinate the investigation of all whales, dolphins, and porpoises (collectively known as cetaceans), marine turtles and  sharks that strand around the Welsh coastline. We carry out the recording of data on all strandings.

We also document each individual stranding, and retrieve a proportion for investigation at post-mortem to allow us to establish a cause of death. The data we collect helps provide an accurate picture of what species are found in UK waters and show local and seasonal distribution.

Strandings that undergo post-mortem examination as part of the CSIP provide us with valuable information on causes of death, disease, contaminants, reproductive patterns, diet and also useful pointers to the general health of the populations living in the seas around our coasts.

We also support other professional and charity organisations such as the RSPCA, RNLI, BDMLR, Natural Resource Wales and local authorities, by providing technical and logistical support.

Along with our professional team we have a team of volunteers around the Welsh coast who support our work by reporting any strandings and help with the collect of data. This enables us to respond quicker to any reported strandings