Fish often become trapped in the shallows during exceptionally low tides, even big fish like mullet and wrasse, but it’s the first time I’ve met an adult shark on a rockpooling trip.
It’s been a cold but productive afternoon and I’m about to head home to defrost my painfully frozen fingers when a movement in the kelp around ten metres away grabs my attention. (more…)
I love this rock; no frame could suit it better than Mawgan Porth’s sheer cliffs, golden sand and wide horizon. Perhaps I need emotional counselling, but it really is a beauty. Its seaward side lifts its face to the churning Atlantic, defying the waves that batter and submerge it for most of the year. Only a few mussels and barnacles cling on to its western edge, oblivious to the storms and sunsets I have watched from here since childhood. (more…)
February is a wonderful month for rock pooling in Cornwall. Well, we think so, although we consider a packet of chocolate biscuits a pre-requisite for achieving anything, especially enlightenment, so (more…)
Standing on the beach it’s hard to imagine how anything survives in our seas at this time of year. Fierce Atlantic winds send the waves surging high onto the shore, exploding against the rocks and blowing hair or sand into my eyes whichever way I turn. Yet on these dark winter days, when many of our land animals have migrated or gone into hibernation, most marine life is clinging on and waiting for spring.
Wintertime is tough even for the hardiest mariners. The strandline is strewn with those that haven’t made it (more…)
After an hour of fruitless searching for stalked jellyfish in this rock pool at Readymoney, I decide to give up and am putting my camera down when I notice a tiny crimson blob stuck to my thumb. (more…)
My son loves the beach at Sainte Anne la Palud; wild dunes stretch towards a distant headland and the sand is perfect for building his creations. It’s why we return here at the end of our holiday in Brittany.
Last time we came it was a high spring tide and the beach was just a sliver of sand strewn with prickly cockles, sea potato urchins and even a dead eel. Now the sea is at its very lowest, a bare glimmer on the horizon. I walk towards distant low cliffs, expecting to find mussel beds around the exposed headland.
I should know by now that rock pooling can be surprising. (more…)
If Cornwall has a cousin, it must be Brittany. The family traits are unmistakeable in the culture, language and, of course, the rock pools, so it seems inevitable that I am drawn to the high headlands, sweeping dunes and granite boulders of the Cornouailles region. With the sun bouncing off the multi-coloured fishing boats behind the harbour wall at Trévignon and the tide dropping, I wander under the towering man-made supports of the lifeboat slipway and nearly drop my camera in excitement.
There are oysters clinging to the seawards side, oodles of them and they’re nearly all the native species, now rare at home due to overfishing and the invasion of the Pacific oyster. Not only that, but among them, reaching out like flowers towards the light are pale pink Devonshire cup corals. At home, I see these occasionally at the back of dark wave-battered overhangs, but these are in the open so I can get in close and marvel at every spoke of their delicate wheel-like markings. It’s a magical moment and I long for a camera with a macro strong enough to capture them. (more…)
The leaves are turning, the swallows are no longer dipping over the rock pools, but this long, warm Cornish summer never seems to end. We set sail from Hannafore over a barely rippling sea in the good ship Red Canoe to seek secret beaches, pirate caves and, of course, photos of interesting marine creatures. (more…)
My mum will be seventy this year, but she cuts a sprightly figure as she steps across the rocks at Castle Beach. In a rare, precious moment we have time together, surrounded by glittering pools and a wide open bay.
These are the moments we hoped for not so many years ago when Mum was lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to a blood transfusion to give her the strength to make it through her cancer operation. (more…)
The summer holiday may be over, but there are still some great opportunities to get your feet wet in Cornish rock pools this autumn.
Next week we’ll see some of the lowest tides of the year and Cornwall Wildlife Trust will be making the most of it with a week of Shore Search expeditions to locations around Cornwall. It’s a sure-fire way to find new things and be inspired by like-minded people. (more…)
Cornish Rock Pools 