VISITORS to Weymouth and Portland had little time to relax when their cruise ship docked as they helped to clear up local beauty spots.

As reported, Portland Port's first cruise ship of the season last week was Hurtigruten’s vessel, MS Fridtjof Nansen, which arrived with 530 passengers.

As part of a partnership project between cruise company Hurtigruten and the RSPB, 135 passengers got involved with removing rubbish from local nature reserves.

The guests helped other volunteers and visited three sites during the day, helping to clear waste found at RSPB Lodmoor, RSPB Radipole and Chesil Beach.

RSPB volunteer David Morphew said: “It was great to see that everyone was so passionate about nature. Walking on Chesil Beach can be exhausting, but the guests set to picking up rubbish with such enthusiasm - it was hard to persuade them to stop."

With Chesil Beach being home to the vitally important Little Tern Recovery Project, which works to protect the South West’s only little tern colony, the removal of the rubbish will help to protect this vulnerable species during breeding season.

A partnership project with Dorset Wildlife Trust, the RSPB’s work to save the colony has been ongoing since 2009, when it was feared that the Chesil Beach little tern colony had dwindled to just a handful of birds and could be lost forever.

Now in better fortunes thanks to the work of the project, it is with the help of willing volunteers and members of the public that Chesil’s iconic bird can continue to inhabit and breed on the beach.

The rubbish cleared by volunteers and Hurtigruten guests will have an impact on maintaining important habitats for birds like little terns in the breeding season to come, the RSPB said.

Mr Morphew added: “The group cleared several bags of rubbish from the little tern colony on Chesil Beach. It’s important to do this now, because when the birds return from Africa in April we won’t be able to access that part of the beach. As they begin to nest, we will have to avoid disturbing the vulnerable chicks in the hope that we can give the colony the best chance of breeding.”