Expanding our horizon...

Good afternoon.

We have a new website that is being added to all the time.

The new website makes this blog void now, with any rockpool visits now documented on the homepage of the site.

You can visit the site by clicking here

Thanks for following the blog, we hope you stay tuned to our website.

Take care and God bless

Steve

The Future

Next year will hopefully herald many exciting visits to some beautiful areas of Britain, in search for unseen life.

Next summer we plan to visit the southwest of the UK for a few days, spending the day rockpooling, and the night mothing. All this was very uncertain until recently. I secured a job working at the uni canteen, so I shall be earning some much needed cash from next year :) Thankfully I'll be able to finance such a trip now.

We don't plan to stick purely to rockpooling in the sea. One thought is to buy some waders and a shrimping net. This allows exploration of the submerged sublittoral, and can yield some good finds. As the name of the net suggests, shrimp (pictured) are common finds, but flatfish, and harbour crabs are not rare. If we ever got lucky, we could even catch a cuttlefish!

Exciting times are ahead, and that is even before we search for sea slugs in 11 days time!

Steve

Nudibranches

We're on the hunt for sea slugs!

We have only ever seen one - it was at Scalby Mills earlier this year and it was a Sea Lemon (common name). No disrespect or anything, but it is the most boring sea slug you would ever come across, and most common.

Happily, there are other species that are present (supposedly) here. One of them is called an orange- clubbed sea slug (pictured), named after the 'clubs' on its back.

Typically, sea slugs are found feeding on bryozoans (they are sea mats which often encrust rocks and algae fronds at low tides) or other algae (eg Cladophora spp.)

We plan a visit to Scalby during next months nighttime low tides (13th & 14th December). Wish us luck!

Steve

**Picture taken from MarLin**

A successful couple of nights

When I say successful, I mena really, really successful. So successful in fact that we caught the most species in a single session since well....never!

We found two new species present at Holbeck - a Bristly (or Hairy) Crab (pictured), and a Two-Spot Goby. Both are welcome additions to our database, and hopefully we'll be seeing more of them next month :)

To see the full list of species found, go to this thread (no login required)...here

A worthwhile trip!

Next up, there are two nice low tides in December worth attending - just before we go back for Xmas. There are...

Saturday 13th December: Low Tide 0.93m 22:29 GMT
Sunday 14th December:

Low Tide 0.83m

23:20 GMT

Then we have some exciting tides in January and February 2009 to look forward to :)

Steve

Night Rockpooling

I have been looking forward to this all week!

On Friday night we will embark on our first night rockpooling session of the autumn/winter months.

The tide is at its lowest at 23:02 when it dips down to 0.95m, which incidentally 2cm lower than the night we found the huge Edible Sea Urchin - so we have high hopes.

The following Saturday morning harbours a low tide of 1.08m at 11:26 and then if we fancy it, another night low tide of 0.95m is there for us to take advantage of at 23:49 Saturday night.

Personally, I will be looking amongst the kelp holdfasts in search of some smaller orgnaisms such as sea spiders, and an uncommon slender spider crab :)

There is always potential for a lobster at these tide levels, and of course anything unexpected is a bonus!

I will post a new entry after each session this weekend.

Steve

Photo Competition

Hi all, I bring good news!

Yesterday we entered 6 pictures into the Warcs Bulletin photo competition, and we won 3rd place for our photo of a Marbled White butterfly (see title photo ^^)

We won £5 for our achievement, which just about covers the cost of printing out the photos, so in total we made a profit of £1.61!

Of course, it isn't about the money, we are just pleased that the photo placed highly. It got 18 votes, and the Peacock butterfly also got 5 votes :)

The voters are knowledgeable about their butterfly species, so it snesnible to assume that the rarer Marbled White stood a decent chance :)

On a rockpooling note, we take a trip down to Holbeck next weekend for our first night rockpooling session of the season! Last year we managed to find Judi Dench (our 16cm wide Edible Sea Urchin, so expectations are high!

Next Rockpooling session: Friday 14th November 2008: Low tide 0.94m @ 11:30pm approx

Steve

Long time no post!

Yeah, erm, sorry about that! There has been a rather long-running farce regarding the internet at our new residence in Scarborough. Thankfully that's all been sorted now and I'm back up and running.

At the end of September we took advantage of four low tides, and visited Scalby Mills, Holbeck (x2) and Cornelian Bay.

We caught three lobsters, one of which was in berry (see title photo). It is coming to the time of year when crustaceans are getting broody - we came across a very angry shore crab, who was obviously more interested in finding a mate than dealing with our camera!

We encountered breeding Swimmer Crabs, Shore Crabs and Edible Crabs, as well as the in-berry lobster.

Links to the pictures can be found here

Our next rockpooling trip will be either the 14th or 15th of November. We shall be keeping an eye out for another species of sea spider, and eventually we will be concentrating on finding species that have eluded our capture so far. One particular low tide next year seems a good bet for new finds. There is a low tide of 0.41m in February '09! Compare this to the more than respectable 0.94m tide coming up in mid-November.

Make sure you check out the link!

Steve

Return to Scarborough

This weekend I shall be resuming my studies in Scarborough. Happily, the course does not start until October 6th, which means leisurely activities can be partaken!

Very good low-tides occur next weekend (28th September, and into the following week), and because of our new location (we are very close to the town centre, and near Peasholm park), we shall be rockpooling at Scalby Mills more often. The idea of exploring this area at a really low tide is exciting to us - we saw our first Broad-claws and sea-slug there.

So this blog is up and running again, and will be updated next week when we finalise our plans.

Steve

4th August Rockpooling

Well the hunt for lobsters proved to be a fairly fruitful one, and the lowest tide of the year so far coupled with excellent weather meant we had a wonderful day out!

We caught two lobsters, one small, one medium. Once again we didn't manage to see a big lobster, but the other two made up for that nicely. Plenty of the usual suspects were found as well, including two rather large edible crabs, and a few nice Bullhead fish, which we've not seen in a fair while.

The picture is of my little brother Alex holding the bigger lobster.

Due to me being in Dronfield for the rest of the summer, this blog will be inactive now until early October.

Take care,

Steve

Butterflies & Moths

What a lovely week! Last week that is, with the hot sunshine beating down throughout. This week hasn't been bad either to be honest, and we got a nice storm on Friday morning :)

Last week I went up to a friends house for the second half of the week (many thanks mate!) to a spot of moth trapping and butterfly huntin'!

Over the course of the week, we saw an incredible 18 species of butterfly and a variety of moths, both macro and micro.

My favourite moth of the week had to be the Poplar Hawk Moth, which is a beasty! We caught 6 in total, and got some great pictures and videos (I'll upload the videos later).

Some beautiful butterflies too, notably the stunning Peacock butterfly, which I've chosen as the picture for this blog post - stunning, ain't it?

On a rockpooling note, the mega low-tide trip to Scarborough on Monday is still very much on the cards. The weather looks pretty decent at this stage, and with a tide of 0.52m, we can't fail to see some fantasic sealife!

Steve

Plans for the summer

Hi!

Not posted for a while, mostly because I've been on a rather intensive 4 week teaching placement. It was hugely rewarding though, and it went by in the blink of an eye!

I plan to take my brother's up to Scarborough on the 4th of August, when the low tide is just 0.52m (the lowest I will have experienced!). Hopefully that'll come off.

Secondly, I would like to try the west or southwest coast at some point this summer for rockpooling - so I can photograph some different organisms.

Thirdly, there is a moth night on the 26th July near Brough. My good friend James has said that I would be welcome to coem up armed with my camera. Things are in the preliminary stage for that idea, but hopefully I'll get the opportunity to view some new species of moth!

Finally, I will be off on holiday to Marbella on the 25th August, and again armed with my camera, I'll try to get some photo's of interesting weather, and interesting nature around the resort.

See you soon,

Steve

**picture is of garden snail taken in mid-June this year amongst some nettles at dusk**

Spider Crab found, plus one more rockpooling day!

The 0.69m tide really did deliver, and we found our first spider crab, which was nice. We also found 3 lobsters, but only managed to catch one. Unfortunately, the other two were a bit to smart for us, and we couldn't tempt them out of their crevices. One of these rebel lobsters was rather large (50cm approx) and we are gutted that we didn't catch it.

Beacuse of this, we are going down to the same area tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon. The low tide is a more than respectable 0.92m, so hopefully we'll get a second chance!

Don't forget to check my youtube channel (links on older posts further down this page) for some new videos!

More soon,

Steve

June 2nd and June 4th

Two recent expeditions to talk about, firstly a tripd to Forge Valley on Monday. We had some bacon this time to entice the crayfish.

I'm happy to say that it worked a treat, and we found and photographed no less than 7 crayfish!

On June 4th (ie earlier today) we rockpooled at Holbeck, and came across the usual array of fish and crustaceans. Two new species, however. The Lesser Sand Eel is something we think we have seen before, but only now have we caught and photographed one to formally ID. Also, we found a Sea Spider! Nymphon gracile is the scientific name, and they are quite uncommon on the East coast, so that's nice!

One fianl rockpooling day this week, on Friday, when the tide is 0.69m at 2pm....lovely!

Here are some links to pictures and videos...

Sea Spider and Sand Eel pictures: http://theweatheroutlook.com/twocommunity/forums/t/18732.aspx

Crayfish and insect pictures: http://theweatheroutlook.com/twocommunity/forums/t/18696.aspx

Youtube channel link: http://www.youtube.com/user/CUTIEP1388 (Sea Spider video, Crayfish video, and mayfly video)

Steve

We've found a crayfish!

Yes, what luck! We have been on a lovely walk along the Forge Valley trail today, which runs down towards a small river.

In that river, just minding it's own business was a small White-clawed crayfish! Must've been about 4" long. We couldn't catch it, but we did get some grainy pictures (maintains the elusive character, you see :P).

We plan a future trip to this river now, armed with some extra knowledge that a ruddy-faced fisherman gave us. We shall attach some bacon to the net, and submerge it slightly in the silt bottom of the river for 30 mins or so. Hopefully, a crayfish will be caught, then we can get some better pictures.

Still pretty amazing though! The small black area on the middle of the picture (top) is the crayfish. You can just about make out its claws.

Steve

Day trips

There was a little change in the order of our day trips, but ah whaddya gonna do?!

On Monday we took a trip to Peasholm Park, in search of butterflies. I can report that the search went very well, and so did the photo-taking! Peasholm Park is a lovely place, and the long grass is perfect for many species of butterfly. The mini-waterfalls make for great hpto opportunities too.

On Tuesday we went to Scalby Beck, hoping to catch a rare White-clawed Crayfish. Sadly, we never found one, but we did get some good pictures of freshwater fish, as well as some lovely scenic shots again. The weather has been so kind to us, and has really made these trips worthwhile.

Today (Wednesday) we went to Cayton Bay in search of fossils. Apart from a few small Belemnites and a few Devil's Toenails, we did't find much. Again, the views and scenery were perfect, so more snaps! We also found plenty of Carnelian stones in nearby Cornelian Bay.

To view a picture slideshow of the last three trips, please visit my Youtube channel...

http://www.youtube.com/user/CUTIEP1388

Feel free to browse around the other marine life videos too!

Steve

Cayton Bay

Yes that's our destination on Tuesday. Slightly further south than Cornelain Bay; we have the option of catching a bus, or having a nice walk (I know which one I'd plump for).

As it is a new site, we don't know what to expect. We have a plan if it doesn't live up to expectations, and that is to just keep going south on to the next bay. You never know, we might end up in Filey before we're satisfied!

So, after Tuesday, I'll have a memory card full of pictures of a wide range of marine organisms, and perhaps a few scenic pictures too.

I look forward to posting them,

Steve

Future trips

Well now that the end of doing coursework is in sight (finally!), we can start thinking more about having days out.

Next Tuesday, we will be off on a rockpooling trip, thought I'm not sure where yet. If we are ambitious enough, then we might try a new site further south of Cornelian Bay, otherwise it'll be somewhere familiar.

The crayfish hunting will be later next week, hopefully the dry weather will hold.

With the youtube channel getting some much appreciated attention (thanks secretpenfold!), we hope to get an even more extensive video catalogue of marine life found.

I'll post the date of our crayfish trip as soon as possible, in the meantime...

...watch this space!

Steve

Cornelian Bay

Hello!

We visited a new site on Friday, and although it didn't really fulfill our expectations, it was close enough to wonder to nearby Cornelian Bay.

Last time we went there, we got trapped by the tide, and had to wade through waist-high seawater! This time, we paid a little more attention!

We found a huge diversity of life again, and another lobster! This one was pretty small if I'm honest, but nevertheless, he was a beaut!

I took my macro lenses down with me, so I managed to get some nice close-ups of Porcelain Crabs, and glass prawns.

We were out for a good 6 hours, and needless to say, I got a little sunburnt. All in all though, it was an excellent day!

A quick note on the coming weeks:

We are on study leave at the moment, and this is a good thing, because on the days that we aren't studying, we can have a day out (weather permitting).

A primary site of interest is Scalby Beck, a freshwater river. We hope to catch the rare White-clawed Crayfish. They are few and far between now due to the invasion of Signal Crayfish from America. they have forced out the White-claws, and have also brought a crayfish plague along with them, which affects the white-claws more than other crayfish species.

Happily, they have been recorded in Scalby Beck, and our aim is to find one and take a photo!

In the not to distant future, these crustaceans are likely to become extinct, so getting a photo of one now is essential!

Here's hoping,

Steve

Diversity

Hello!

Last nights rockpooling really trated us to a vast array of organisms, from Annelids, to Echinoderms, to Chordates, to Crustaceans, we found all-sorts!

It was a mixed night from a lumpsucker point of view. The good news is that we found 4 lumpsuckers, but the bad news is that one was found dead, and another one was found stranded in a small and shallow rockpool. Thankfully, we released the stranded fish into a much deeper rockpool, so hopefully we have given it a chance of survival. The really low tides can be pretty deadly to fish as large as the lumpsucker, as they can easily get trapped in small, draining rockpools.

Now for something new, Plaice! Two small juveniles were found last night, one just 15mm long, the other a less microscopic 60mm (pictured).

The most abundant organisms on the rocky shore last night were the crustaceans! There were Velvet Swimmer Crabs in almost every rockpool, with Shore Crabs and Palaemon elegans (prawn) also found in simialr abundance.

We are taking advantage of our day off on Friday to check out a small new site, and with the weather currently playing ball, we have high hopes for more exciting finds!

Watch this space!

Steve

Finally caught a lobster! (re-post 2nd May 2008)

Hello!

Yes at last we have caught the previously elusive lobster! It wasn't even a proper rockpooling trip - we were just heading back from town the beach way, and were walking across the rocks with the tide going out, and James spotted the lobster crawling on the bottom of a small rockpool.

45 minutes later, after I had gone back for all the equipment whilst James kept watch, we managed to get him out for some richly rewarding pictures!

The colours really are striking!

Steve

Fish, fish, and more fish! (re-post 1st May 2008)

Hello again!

With the weather getting warmer, it's no real surprise that we have been encountering more fish of late. A couple of pregnant fish too; a rockling and another lumpsucker.

The female lumpsucker found today is the biggest fish we have caught here in Scarborough. She was 50cm long, 20cm wide, and 25cm high, really incredible dimensions for a fish found in a rockpool!

We have also seen butterfish, eels, and shanny's, as well as the lumpsucker and rockling.

Steve

Lumpsucker (re-post 22nd April 2008)

Hello!

What a find tonight! The first ever lumpsucker that we have seen was caught last night. At the time, we had no idea what it was, until two members of The Weather Outlook Community suggested that it was a lumpsucker the following morning. A quick check on marLIN confirmed that it was indeed a lumpsucker!

The fish was a male, and was probably protecting eggs. They come further inshore during the spring months, which is why we had seen nothing like it over the winter months. The fish was 35cm long, 12cm wide, and 14cm high. The two striking things about the fish was the colour; a really bright red/orange; and the sheer size, it's a really chunky fish!

I'm really looking forward to what we might find over the rest of spring, and indeed summer.

Steve