An Ocean Oversight December 2025
By Kerry Williams: Communications Officer – Conservation, Sussex Wildlife Trust
December has a real indoors vibe. Short days, finishing work in the dark and inconsistent weather doesn’t exactly motivate us to get out, even if we know it’s good for us. This poses a challenge for connecting with wildlife, which we know can increase people’s desire to protect the natural world. Despite many species hibernating or migrating, there is still so much to see. To throw yourself in at the deep end, I encourage you this winter to explore our beautiful Sussex coast.
That said, in reviewing my parish magazine articles of this year, I realise I’ve not included any marine species. This is awkward. If our marine team find out they’ll be livid. But also, we work hard to connect people with blue spaces, promote the value and wonder of the ocean and fight for its protection, so how could I have overlooked it?
The marine environment has long since suffered from a lack of attention in the conservation world and beyond. At the risk of sounding like I’m defending myself, in a way it’s understandable. We’re terrestrial mammals, desperately under-resourced for the aquatic. We seek warmth, dryness, a firm foundation underfoot, and can align more easily with perils of the warm-blooded – and things with a face.
Many of us value coastal connections; beach trips, swimming, travel to warmer waters. But our oceans are not a luxury. They are a lifeline. A critical feature of our ecosystem, which we and all other life on earth could not survive without. Our disconnect with the ocean environment is contributing to its demise, and we must turn it around.
There is something fascinating about the unknown of the big blue, and once you start to investigate, you realise how truly epic it is. Although much is out of sight from land, the diversity of healthy UK waters has such colour and vibrancy, from royal blue Lobsters to 90s-neon Corkwing Wrasse, and other-wordly nudibranchs.
In winter it’s wild. The drama of furious waters, crashing waves and freezing sea-spray. Watching, huddled in layers, a freezing cold nose and the promise of an after winter-walk’s too-hot-yet chips. Heading to the water’s edge for stone-sprinkled sand and shell treasure discoveries. And there’s nothing like a stomp along a windswept beach to galvanise a slumped after-Christmas-dinner bunch.
So, this December, why not skip a shopping trip, dodge the odd social occasion, push that deadline. Instead, head to the sea. And I’ll submit many a marine article in 2026. Promise.