new year | Cornish Rock Pools

Like everything else about 2020, this is a strange New Year’s Eve. Many have lost loved ones this year, and most of us have spent the festive season apart from friends and family. Whatever the year ahead brings, it will be made better by connecting with the natural world and doing the small (or large) things that we can to build a better society and environment.

On the eve of 2021, I am struggling personally to come to terms with losing EU citizenship and all of the opportunity, discovery and connections it has brought me. International cooperation is essential to tackling the global issues that face our wildlife and we will have to work harder than ever to build understanding and find solutions to problems that cannot wait.

Life will go on and I am super-excited about my new children’s book, Beach Explorer, due to be published in the spring. As ever, I will continue to bring you the very best of the Cornish rock pools straight to your computer through my blog.

To bring a little cheer to myself and to you, here are a few of my favourite rock pool wildlife photos from my encounters this year. I hope you will be inspired to get outside and meet your own local wildlife, and to join all of us who are working to protect and restore nature.

A Happy and Healthy New Year to All! Bonne Année 2021!

A painted top shell – January 2020

Pagurus cuanensis, the hairy hermit crab. March 2020

Bright coloured sponge (Prob Oscarella sp.) April 2020.

“Cedric the spider crab”. Photo by Cornish Rock Pools Junior. May 2020.

Cladonema radiatum – an athecate hydroid medusa. July 2020.

Calma glaucoides sea slug with its spawn. August 2020.

Star ascidian growing on seaweed. September 2020.

My first ever Xaiva biguttata crab! October 2020.

Though there is much to love about December, I know I’m not the only one who’s flagging well before the end of the month. The spring tides arrive at the perfect time to boost my energy levels, ready for all the rockpooling and writing adventures that await me in 2020.

No-one in the family is sure what day it is, and the gloomy weather isn’t doing anything for our timekeeping. By the time we reach Plaidy, we only have half an hour left before it will begin to get dark. Fortunately, that’s plenty of time to find some winter colour.

This beach is ideal for strawberry anemones, a species that seems to like some wave energy. While I try to take photos of a stunning open anemone, its bright tentacles tucked too far under a dark overhang for my camera to capture well, the waves surge in behind me, finding a hole somewhere in my left welly.

Undeterred by the steady seep of chilly water down my ankle, I take a close look at the tough seaweeds that have clung on at the edges of the pools through the winter storms. There are tufty pink fringes of coral weed, the frayed remains of last summer’s kelp, and, sprouting from the rocks at the pool’s entrance, there are dark clusters of wiry-looking Irish moss. Among these seaweeds are dozens of mauve stalked jellyfish dancing like fairy lights.

Stalked jellyfish – Calvadosia cruxmelitensis.

In every rocky crack and crevice alongside the pools there are crabs lurking, waiting for the returning tide. A velvet swimming crab watches me through red eyes like glowing coals.

Nearby, the sculpted pink spire of a painted top-shell brightens up a shady overhang that is also home to several cushion stars and bright sponges.

Everywhere I look there are colourful sea squirts, shells, fish and seaweeds. These may be the darkest days of the year, and I can feel a cold coming on, but the brightness of the shore always reminds me that spring is around the corner.

In fact, new life is beginning already in the rock pools. Before I leave I come across this 2mm long baby sea hare grazing on the seaweed. By the summer, if it survives, this tiny slug will have developed a striking brown leopard-spot colouration and will have grown large enough to fill my palm. Perhaps we will meet again?