Skomer Marine Nature Reserve is an underwater marine nature reserve located off the coast of Pembrokeshire in Wales. This is one of only two marine reserves in Britain. The reserve completely surrounds the islands of Skomer and Middleholm, and encompasses the mainland coastline around the end of the Marloes peninsula, including the small bay of Martin's Haven.
The sea bed and rocky shelves of the island are teeming with life. Common eelgrass, Zostera marina, one of the very few plants that flower underwater, grows on beds of sand and gravel in sheltered waters and its long, grass-like leaves form underwater lawns that provide food and shelter for other plants and animals. Species of lobsters, crabs and other crustaceans abound, and grey seals give birth on the coast in October and November.
Famous quotes containing the words marine, nature and/or reserve:
“People run away from the name subsidy. It is a subsidy. I am not afraid to call it so. It is paid for the purpose of giving a merchant marine to the whole country so that the trade of the whole country will be benefitted thereby, and the men running the ships will of course make a reasonable profit.... Unless we have a merchant marine, our navy if called upon for offensive or defensive work is going to be most defective.”
—William Howard Taft (18571930)
“As I sat before the fire on my fir-twig seat, without walls above or around me, I remembered how far on every hand that wilderness stretched, before you came to cleared or cultivated fields, and wondered if any bear or moose was watching the light of my fire; for Nature looked sternly upon me on account of the murder of the moose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“In a democracyeven if it is a so-called democracy like our white-élitist onethe greatest veneration one can show the rule of law is to keep a watch on it, and to reserve the right to judge unjust laws and the subversion of the function of the law by the power of the state. That vigilance is the most important proof of respect for the law.”
—Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923)