A CAMPAIGN has been launched to search the Dorset coastline for dolphins and endangered birds.

Bridport-based charity MARINElife are hoping top raise £6,000 towards the project - which will form the largest survey of its kind of protected bottlenose dolphins and the globally endangered seabird, the Balearic shearwater.

Funding for the project will be raised through a national crowdfunding website, before volunteers will embark on charter boats for the survey in August.

Dr Rachel Davies, conservation research manager at MARINElife, said: "This is one of the most exciting projects we have planned this year and is vital to truly understanding how many bottlenose dolphins live and breed in the waters of the south west.

"MARINElife have catalogued and photographed over 100 different animals over the last few years, but only over a limited area. Completing a full survey in a single day enables us to get a real understanding of their numbers and distribution over the whole of the south west and work more effectively for their protection."

The survey is also targeting what is Britain’s only globally endangered seabird, the Balearic shearwater. Just a few thousand breeding pairs of these birds remain in the world and each summer more than 1,000 of the 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.

Each of the nine charter boats will carry up to 12 surveyors and passengers, with the first boat launching from Portland and the remaining eight vessels leaving from ports along the coast from Dorset to Cornwall.

The survey will extend up to Ilfracombe in North Devon and include Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel. Additionally, volunteer surveyors with binoculars and spotting scopes will monitor the coastline from cliff tops at strategic sites.

Tony Whitehead, speaking for the RSPB in the South West said; “The information collected, including by RSPB staff and volunteers, on August 18 will help us find out so much more about the population of Balearic shearwaters that use UK waters, especially in summer.

"This is the UK’s only globally critically endangered bird and it’s vital we learn about its habits, migrations and the places it favours so that we can afford the species proper protection.“

To support the project, please visit crowdfunder.co.uk/marinelife