If I said to you that the UK government was responsible for rare sea turtles, endangered sharks, tropical coral reefs and quite possibly more penguins than any other country, you might think I was talking about some aquariums or zoos. It’s certainly not what you think about in UK seas, especially at this grey time of year (though of course we do have visiting turtles, many shark species, cold water corals, and puffins as penguin-wannabes). But across the world the UK has ‘overseas territories’. They are relics of a turbulent past when flags were planted across the world, and mostly, these days, they are islands – like Bermuda, Pitcairn, and Ascension. So, in turn, the amazing wildlife in the seas around these islands is effectively ‘British’.
