A good day out rock pooling!

 

 Lots of Broad Clawed Porcelain Crabs were found under the rocks

                                         
  Tean and I made our way down to Porth Hellick in the overcast skies, late this morning to go rock pooling. At the crossroads we caught up with Dave Mawer and his two sons, who also had the same idea. First a quick look at the pool saw a Water Rail and the usual wildfowl including, the Pochard, 2 Wigeon and Coot and 3 Teal. Also, I located the male Firecrest by call and found it feeding with up to 6+Golcrest and 3 Chiffchaff, including one of the latter chiffchaffing.

                                     A Goldcrest taking a bath

  The tide was very low and Dave was already far out in the bay looking in the rock pools. When we joined them, we found a Shore Clingfish! A great start as it was a first for all of us. His sons were feeling cold and wanted to leave. Tean and I carried on for nearly two hours and as we lifted rocks we started finding the more common stuff like Broad Clawed Porcelain, Velvet Swimming, Furrowed and Shore Crab, Squat Lobster, Worm Pipefish and Beadlet and Snakelock Anemone . We were also rewarded with a Spoon / Echiuroid Worm and four species of starfish, Cushion, Brittle, Seven-arm and Spinny. This is the first time we've rock pooled in early spring and altogether we found ten new species that we had not seen before!

 

Shore Clingfish. Can be a hard fish to find in rock pools.    

 

The under and upperside of a large Spiny Starfish 

 

You can just see the Brittlestar on the left with a Seven-arm Starfish.    

 

Common Flat Periwinkle Littorina obtusata were all over the shop 

 

Giant Goby 

 

A Sand Goby was a first for Tean and I 

 

A Thorney Dorris on the right. A Sea Slug and the left, another type of Sea Slug sp? 

 

We found lots of  Scale Worm of different varieties 

 

Marine Worm Leptoplana tremellaris

 

A Spoon / Echiuroid Worm  

This shrimp sp, had a broad prominent white line down it's back when swimming 

 

A Furrowed Crab clinging to a rock and my finger 

 

2 Furrowed Crabs fighting each other 

 

One of my favorites, Squat Lobstar  

 

A bull Grey Seal keeps a close eye on us as we played football on Porthcressa Beach