Beach clean, rockpools and mermaids' purses

More used to working in an office and at a screen, members of the Fundraising and Communications Team were delighted to spend an afternoon at Ovingdean beach with Wild Coast Sussex Project Manager Nikki Hills, doing a beach clean, learning about what lies beneath the rockpools and doing a mini mermaid purse survey, (shark eggshell cases), to report back to the Shark Trust 

But first of all, we took a well-being paddle in the sea, feeling the sand beneath our toes, listening to the waves and resting our eyes by gazing out to the horizon. It's a splendid thing to do, even if putting socks back onto damp, pebble-dashed feet without overbalancing was a bit of a challenge for some of us. 

Then a few people looked in rockpools to spot marine treasures, whilst others collected rubbish from the beach. Bits of plastic, tin cans, ghost fishing gear and various strange other items.

When the groups met up, Nikki went through a few finds:

• Two pieces of Irish Moss that are different colours (above). The one that is grey coloured has little creatures on it – it’s called a sea mat. Sea mats are a colony of individual animals called zooids.
• We felt the texture of the discarded shell of the Velvet Swimming Crab, which indeed does feel velvety. It is also known as the Devil Crab.

• Nikki told us that Limpets ‘lick’ and scrape seaweed off rock then leave a mucus trail so they can find their way back again. 
• Barnacles are actually crustaceans and like crabs, they have legs. They also have the biggest penis (proportionally to overall size) than any other creature
• Dog Whelks are snails that drill into mussels and Barnacles, inject enzyme, then drink it, which is an excellent fact for Halloween

Then we went in search of mermaid’s purses or shark eggshell cases, so we could report our findings to the Shark Trust.

One we spotted, the egg case from the Small-spotted Catshark is also called Huss, Nikki told us. The Huss, or Rock Salmon you get at fish and chip shops is not a fish at all, is it a shark, so is not sustainable and should be avoided. More here

It was a great afternoon at the beach. We felt better for it, we knew more and we left the shore a cleaner place.