Hi all,
I moved down to Torquay for the summer to get some serious rockpooling done. I'm nuts about rockpooling. I'm basically a 33 year old boy when I get down onto the shore.
Anyway, I'm posting for two reasons.
Firstly, to give some tips for good rockpooling areas down here, and secondly to see if anyone is interested in meeting up at some point in late summer to go cove to cove (preferably on foot or by bike), seeing what we can find and perhaps taking photos of the best specimens (I'll buy a macro lens for this if needs be).
So, a short guide to rockpooling by cove/beach in Torbay and surrounding areas.
Torquay beach on the rocky area around Corbyn Head.
Very good for pipefish from Spring into summer and a good spread of all types of crab you would commonly find.
Also very good for eels (good luck catching them though), Blennies and also fairly good for common starfish and cushion stars.
Meadfoot Beach
Currently my favourite rockpooling beach.
Exceptionally good for large velvet swimming crabs (7" shells not uncommon), edible crabs (8" plus), all types of other commonly found crabs, fairly good for pipefish, good for Blennies (found a 9" fish a few weeks back), good for cushion stars, common starfish and brittle stars.
Very good for squat lobsters of all sizes.
Very good for young shrimps and lobsters and also large common prawns.
I highly recommend this beach if you like diversity and especially if you like the challenge of catching an enormous (and very agressive) velvet swimming crab. Just be sure that if you want to keep the V S crabs for a while, you use a separate bucket as they WILL snip off the limbs of anything else you put in there.
St Mary's Bay
This is a very good beach if you enjoy catching large numbers of crabs(!) as there are many, many large rocks which can be overturned at the south of the bay, and some large exposed rockpools at low tide which are good for blennies. Also, here you'll find brittle stars in high numbers and plenty of prawns.
Churston Cove
Very good at low tide for pretty much anything, including shore clingfish and 5 bearded rocklings and the icing on the cake: seahorses. A good bay for snorkelling.
Well that's it for now. Back to work.