A BRIDPORT marine charity is going ahead with an 'exciting' survey next week after a successful Crowdfunding campaign.

MARINELife has raised £6,000 towards the cost of carrying out a survey of the coastline of Dorset, Devon and Cornwall - which will take place on Tuesday (18).

The charity will now aim to complete the largest survey of its kind of protected bottlenose dolphins.

Emma Webb, trustee at MARINELife, said: "The survey is definitely going ahead on August 18.

"Hopefully it is going to be a nice day for it and we are very exciting about it all. We did reach our crowdfunding target which we are very pleased about, but we are still looking to raise as much as we can get in order to get as much out of the survey as we can.

"I am going to be out on one of the boats and I really cannot wait - it is going to be really good to see what is out there. The aim is to find out how many bottlenose dolphins there are in the south west."

Each boat will carry up to 12 surveyors and passengers with the first boat launching from Portland, with the remaining eight boats launching from various ports along the coast.

The survey will also look to record the number of Balearic shearwaters around the south west coast.

Just a few thousand breeding pairs of these birds remain in the world and each summer 1,000 or more birds migrate from the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean up the west coast of France, crossing the channel before working their way around the south west coast. They rely on the rich feeding in our coastal waters at a time when they are moulting and the south west offers them a critically important habitat at this stage of their annual migration.

"We are also looking at these extremely rare birds," added Ms Webb. "Who knows what else we might find.

"There could be all sorts of things in Lyme Bay, and the scientific method will will be using means this will be a very accurate survey."

Last week, the first sighting of a leatherback turtle in Dorset was made near Lyme Regis, while last month dolphins were filmed swimming alongside members of Bridport Gig Club near West Bay.

For more information on MARINElife, please visit marine-life.org.uk