Extreme rockpooling

[Marineboy]

Just a word to those off to explore the low water spring tide tomorrow. The weather looks good. A day like today will be great. I have the day off work for this, and for me low tide is about lunchtime so time and tide are on my side.
If you can make it to the beach, this low tide promises to be one of the lowest tides for some time. I am looking forward to poking about in the exposed kelp beds - you never know what you'll find.
Keep an eye on the tide and be careful out there.

[lipase]

oh dear, looks like I might have remembered too late; train tickets to the seaside at this short notice are expensive. It all depends on whether my marine biologist friend wants to go to the rockpools as much as I do and is willing to drive!

[Force Eleven]

Originally Posted by Marineboy

Just a word to those off to explore the low water spring tide tomorrow. The weather looks good. A day like today will be great. I have the day off work for this, and for me low tide is about lunchtime so time and tide are on my side.
If you can make it to the beach, this low tide promises to be one of the lowest tides for some time. I am looking forward to poking about in the exposed kelp beds - you never know what you'll find.
Keep an eye on the tide and be careful out there.

Our low tides here are at night (the lowest anyway). We went during the day today to get some good underwater photos. Last night was good, and on Sunday night we found our first father lasher!

Tonight is our final night out of three successive nights, low tide of 0.30m is our second lowest ever (in 3 years here), 0.27 last night was our lowest, and we saw three lumpsuckers, and three corkwing wrasse, among plenty of other things as well, including a 15cm wide dahlia anemone that was on a sandy area at Scalby

[gordonlowe]

thanks for the posting, took your tip and went to filey, collected a few varied coloured beadlets. where exactly at scalby do you go? went on sunday, from scalby beck outlet then straight out to the furthest point on the rocks, 1 beadlet and a few algae covered rocks for the tank, half decided to start looking elsewhere.

[Claire Fifi]

I am so jealous reading all your posts. Rockpooling is probably my favourite watery activity, second only to snorkeling - and at least you can remain dressed for cold weather whilst poking amongst the rocks!

I will have to wait til Easter before I can get to any decent beaches

[Marineboy]

Tuesday was good - blue sky, sunshine, calm and warm, with a low tide of 0.20 at nearby Torquay.

Very enjoyable clambering over rocks and weed. Can't say I found anything unexpected as I'd been to Meadfoot before. Unfortunately I spent too much time collecting stranded starfish, Asterias rubens, and putting them back in the water! (The tideline also had its fair share of starfish - obviously casualties from the previous low waters).
Other echinoderms included brittle stars, cushion stars and the green sea urchins. It was good to see a healthy population of reasonably sized edible crabs seemingly occupying every available hidehole. The green shore crabs were obvious by their absence, as were large velvet crabs, but smaller velvets were plentiful. Both species of the porcelain crabs were abundant, as were the squat lobster, squamifera, and the hairy crab, hirtellus. The weeds too were looking clean and fresh, dotted here and there with the blue rayed limpets, and a large number of the pretty painted top shells. Again I found what I can only identify as the Mediterranean slipper limpet - the shells are just too lightweight to be the american slipper limpet and they live singly - these Crepidula gibbosa are a Mediterranean species.
Fish were present - butterfish, pipefish, rockling and blenny.
Sea anemones were represented by some very-sorry-looking-left-high-and-dry snakelock sea anemonies and further up the beach a few beadlets.
A good few hours rockpooling.

I bet the extreme high tides chasing rodents up the estuaries were good too. Anyone see that?

[tom00_uk]

was near oban for the tide, could see lots of small fish and spring tails swimming about, but the rock pools were all iced over so could not get in for a real look with out breaking in and did not want to be a vandal