Communities Fund has provided £1,117 of match funding
Our Shores, Our Future
Truro, England, United Kingdom
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Aim
We're raising £40,000 to help communities discover, monitor and care for the changing marine wildlife on their local coastline.
Every community has a coastline worth caring about
The Rock Pool Project believes that the best way to protect our seas is to help people fall in love with the wildlife living on their own doorstep.
Across the UK, thousands of people live just minutes from extraordinary marine habitats, yet many have never explored the rock pools, seaweeds and marine wildlife that make their local coastline so special.
Our mission is to change that.
Climate change is happening locally
Climate change isn't something happening somewhere else.
Warmer seas, changing weather patterns and shifting species distributions are already reshaping the wildlife found in rock pools across Britain. Warm-water species are becoming more common, while others are retreating as conditions change.
These changes are happening on beaches that people visit every day but most of us simply don't notice them.
By helping people discover what's living on their local shore, we also help them understand how those ecosystems are changing over time.
Local Action, National Impact!!
Through our Big Rock Pool Challenge, we combine citizen science with technology and friendly competition to inspire people to keep exploring.
Local communities take part in BioBlitz Battles, earn points for recording wildlife, unlock achievements and contribute to live leaderboards through our custom-built app.
What starts as a fun day exploring the beach quickly becomes something much bigger: a community returning month after month, season after season, to build a long-term picture of how wildlife on their own coastline is changing in response to our warming seas.
Building local communities
We've already grown from two local hubs to ten volunteer-led hubs around the UK.
Each hub is run by local volunteers, bringing together families, schools, community groups and wildlife enthusiasts to explore, learn and record nature together.
We're helping local communities build lasting connections with their coast and with each other.
Your support will help us:
- Train and support local volunteer leaders.
- Provide equipment for community events.
- Develop our BioBlitz Battle app and digital tools.
- Deliver more local BioBlitz Battles.
- Help more people discover the wildlife on their own doorstep.
- Build a stronger national picture of how Britain's marine wildlife is changing.
Every new volunteer, every wildlife record and every community event starts locally but together they create one of the UK's largest community-led marine citizen science programmes.
Photography courtesy of the Marine Biological Association.
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 27th October 2026 at 8:54am