Shoresearch Week 2015 Day 2, Hannafore point, Looe in Pictures

Fantastically low tide - you could easily have walked to Looe Island! 

..,.,.and how excited was I?! My first Conger eel - I've spent my life rockpooling but never found one of these before!! 40 must be my lucky year! 

what a beauty!! note the lower jaw is the same lenght as the upper jaw, much more blue /grey than a common eel and two large nostril tubes

Beautiful star ascidians Botryllus shlosseri - photo by Jenny Lord! Thanks Jenny this is definitely going in my collection!

Montagus crabs - now very common all around the Cornish Coast - rare when I was a kid. Note they vary in colour alot, this one lacks the typical black tips on its claws but it is definately a Montagu's! Xantho hydrophilus

It was nice to get into the eel grass beds although they seemed to have reduced in size since last year - lots of brown leaves suggesting the autumn die back has started relatively early. Here is a nice Stalked Jellyfish Leucernariopsis campanulata found on a sea grass frond by eagle eyed Jake Meyers.

Lots of Creephorn was found - Chondracanthus acicularis

beautiful conditions for shoresearching - Photo Jenny Lord

Chondrus crispus, Irish moss grows very fleshy and long at Hannafore - photo Jenny Lord

The Shoresearch team!! Thanks guys it was a great survey! 

Find out more about Looes incredible marine life at the Looe Marine Conservation Groups website

Shoresearch Week 2015, day one Trevaunance cove, St Agnes, Highlights in Photos

Low tide at St Agnes - directly beneath the photo lies a cave called Conger hole! 

Beautiful fan worms Branchiomma bombyx found in kelp holdfasts from Conger Hole

Dichyota dichotoma,  Brown fan weed

A perfect day for it! Photo by Deborah Edwards

Blue Rayed limpet Patella pellucida on kelp, tiny but beautiful

Patrick and Aspen with a nice big edible crab, Cancer pagurus

Bryozoans probably Bugula spp in a cave

Platyneris dumerili a small polychaete also found in a kelp holdfast

Juvenile shore crab Carcinus maenas

Spiny starfish Marthasterias glacias 

Marthasterias glacias Starfish eating dinner 

Find out more about St Agnes and its incredible marine life by visiting the St Agnes Marine Conservation Groups website

Supermoon provides Super Shoresearching - SHORESEARCH WEEK 2015

Cornwall Wildlife Trust volunteers were treated to the best rockpooling the United Kingdom has to offer last week on their annual Shoresearchsurvey week. The huge spring tides generated by the supermoon were amongst the lowest seen in recent years. On top of this the weather was incredible with bright sunshine and light winds and the high atmospheric pressure meant that the water was pushed even further down!

Portrait of a Hairy Crab Pilumnus hirtellus - photographed at Polzeath by Matt Slater

Shoresearch Week is an annual event now in its fourth year where volunteers record the marine life they find at all five of Cornwall’s Voluntary Marine Conservation Areas, at St Agnes, Polzeath, Looe Fowey and Helford.

Matt Slater, Marine Awareness Officer at Cornwall Wildlife Trust led the events,

“It was an amazing week with perfect weather and great company. Shoresearch is great because you never know what you will find and with a team of keen volunteers the chances of finding something exciting is far greater! Our marine life in Cornwall is incredible and overall we were able to record over 200 species at all five sites and a total of 47 volunteers took part.

Matt and the Conger! Photo by Jenny Lord

Highlights of the week included;
• Finding beautiful colourful fan worms growing on kelp at Trevaunance Cove, St Agnes, exploring the eerie conger hole and seeing a tiny baby tompot blenny with its fluffy eyebrows!
• Finding a small conger eel on the shore at Hannafore point beneath a rock. Volunteers were able to walk nearly half way to Looe Island and were right in amongst the kelp zone, finding animals and plants you would normally have to snorkel to see!
• At Polzeath an incredibly calm sea meant we were able to access rocky platforms covered in Kelp and furbelows which we have never been able to get near to safely before. Living amongst this seaweed we found stunningly camouflaged and rarely recorded Gibbs spider crabs and a beautiful fish called a Montagu’s sea snail.
• At Prisk Cove Helford we saw bright green juvenile ballan wrasse, weird sea cucumbers, lots of green sea urchins and a wealth of other species beneath the rocks.
• At Fowey we found common starfish, cup corals and loads of Risso’s crabs – climate change indicator species whose range is moving further north.

Matt Slater continues,

“It is encouraging to note how many young people took part, Shoresearch is great fun and everyone reported that they learned a lot by taking the time to find out what is living on the shore which many people don’t get a chance to see! Many of our volunteers go on to develop a real passion for the marine world and it is exciting to be finding the marine biologists of the future!

Five days in a row of rockpooling is surprisingly hard work, reports Matt,

I had blisters on my toes from my wetsuit boots and cuts on my fingers from lifting rocks, but it was well worth it! I feel incredibly privileged to have been able to have spent the week in this way! Next week I will be in the office pressing seaweeds and identifying specimens from hundreds of photographs taken by myself and the volunteers”.

If you are interested in helping out on our surveys and helping as a volunteer for your local marine group please get in touch.

Visit our volunteering page if you would like to get involved.

Trevone Training survey

It was a pleasure to lead a survey and training day at Trevone, on Cornwall's north coast near Padstow, last Sunday. We had a cracking day for weather (rare for this summer!) and a great team of volunteers old and new! And none were disappointed by the choice of location. Trevone rocky beach has a huge area of intertidal rocky shore exposed on a spring low tide. We walked down the shore following the storm overflow pipe until we were at the start of a long reef running north into the bay - With this as our central point we carried out a Shore Thing timed 20 minute survey for key climate change species and discovered that we were on an area with tremendous diversity all around us!

We then carried out a walkover survey - basically a rockpool ramble where we recorded everything we found using cameras and filling in a Shoresearch walkover form. A rocky gully full of large slates was probably the most productive area. Each slate was home to many different species of crab and other crustaceans and there was a huge diversity of seaweeds.  there are many large shallow pools some over run by wire weed but many home to high diversity of species including rainbow wrack and ceramium, false irish moss Mastocarpus stellatus and irish moss. 

Higher level pools were full of Bifurcaris bifurcata (tuning fork seaweed), and home to Montagus blennies and a butter fish - to slippery to photograph. Jake waded out to a nice overhanging rock which was home to Bugula plumosa and cowries. 

It was great that volunteers came from all over corwnall including John Meakin from Looe, Jane Wiltshire and Sarah Stevens from Polzeath, Jake from Hayle and new recruits Bettina and Andrew from Padstow and Alex from Falmouth. It is a great shore and was another great survey! Next ones are coming up in September when we have a week of surveys at all of Cornwalls VMCAs!

Here are some highlights in photos!

Shoresearch survey in action!

Typical welcome from the local velvet crabs!

Lots of beautiful brittle stars

Pool full of tuning-fork weed Bifurcaria bifurcata

Jake with his head in a cave

Nice find - a tompot blenny well done Jake!

Strange Ascidian found beneath a a rock - probably Botrylloides leachii

Beautiful coral weed- Corralina elongata

Jania rubens growing on Cladostephus spongiosus - hairy sand weed

another great brittle star

Snail trails in the sand! Osilinus lineatus - the toothed or thick topshell

Rainbow Wrack 

Isopod Dynamena bidentata

Incredible marine life hides, just a stones throw from the Hidden Hut at Porthcurnick!

Fantastic day for a survey - this is the reef we explored for our shoresearch survey. Porthcurnick is on the Roseland near Porthscatho. This is the view from the Hidden Hut- a fantastic beach cafe with incredible food and what a view!

First time Shoresearcher Tallana had the find of the day! Here it is....

Asterina phylactica  (sounds a bit like battlestar galactica)- a very rare tiny cushion starfish - what a beauty!! This is a climate change indicator species that we may well start seeing more of in Cornwall it is about one centimeter across and is an adult! more info here

Tallanas young eyes helped her also spot this tiny and beautiful chiton on a small pebble

I found this tiny crab which I think is Pirimela denticulata judging by the shape of the carapace (shell)

Another personal favourite crab - the Hairy crab! dont grow very large - about (3cm max) but are pretty common on the south coast under boulders! 

I have never seen a baby spiny starfish ( Marthsterias glacias )as small as this one!! Great find by Tallana and her mum Anthea! it was about one centimetre!

In a mid shore pool that was full of Corallina algae we found this beautful cowrie, Trivia monacha, roaming about - note the soft mantle wraps around its pale shell making it look dark in colour when roaming about underwater. 

We were really excited to see this - it is hard to believe that this isn't a different species but apparently its a juvenile cowrie- about the same size with a very thin and delicate shell with a clear spire on the end and a very open aperture compared with that of an adult cowrie.

Rob found a beauty Cornish suckerfish Lepadogaster lepadogaster

While we are on fish.. check out this beautiful juvenile dragonet - only about one inch in length! swimming in a shallow pool!

SPOT THE STALKED JELLYFISH - many of the pools were full of wireweed - a non native species that has been around for many years now- we increasingly notice that native species are living in it such as stalked jellyfish. 

 here is a larger pair of  beautiful and under recorded stalked jellyfish Haliclystus octoradiatus which were found living in the wire weed  approx 12mm tall.

here are some Obelia hydroids living in the wire weed

Algolaphenia hydroid in rainbow wrack which was home to a huge diversity of species!

We found an amazing pool with a host of small Montagu's blennies - some of which were really dark in colour - presumably a natural colour morph. here is a silhouette of one showing its beautiful tentacle crest which is diagnostic of this species.

Lots of  harpoon weed on this site - note the harpoons!

It was a great training day - really nice to see some new volunteers, Pat Farrell, Anthea and Tallana, Simon the work experience guy and Miranda Moore and her dad! Plus old hands, Sarah Stevens, Sue Scott and local seaweed enthusiast Christine Townsend.

We finished off with a lovely piece of cake and a cup of tea at the Hidden Hut - thanks to Simon and Jemma for making us so welcome! 

Next date for Shoresearch volunteer training is 16th August at the amazing Trevone... but between then and now there are lots of rockpool rambles you can take part in to practice your skills see the events listing in a previous post!

Cheers 

Matt