Butterfish and Breadcrumbs

In order to pick up some species of the rocky shore for the YETI challenge Rich and I joined a group led by Anthony Hurd from Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Living Seas Centre on 13^th January, after a snow shower, to investigate the inter-tidal zone at Flamborough’s South Landing. All the photos are courtesy YWT.

After checking out the ringed plovers, redshanks and rock pipits on the beach it was eyes down to investigate seaweeds. Lots of bladderwrack was in evidence, also serrated wrack and sugar wrack. When the latter species dries out, sweet-tasting crystals form, hence the name.  The cream-coloured dots of winkle eggs were also found on this seaweed. Irish moss (carragheen) is a purplish seaweed and traditional remedy for coughs and colds. False Irish moss, sometimes known as ‘cat’s puff’ was growing alongside, while in the rock pools the attractive red comb weed floated.

A silvery sheen on kelp was the bryozoan sea mat, a colony of filter-feeding animals. 

Fairly recently it has been discovered that these primitive animals are able to communicate by means of chemicals. Hairy sea mat covering another seaweed had turned it completely grey.

Also under rocks was the pale yellowish breadcrumb sponge, next to an orange sponge of indeterminate species, and two jelly-like blobs, one red, one light brown. These were beadlet anemones, with their tentacles retracted as the tide was out. Anemones are able to move to avoid predators (though not very fast). Limpets ('flithers', in Flamborough parlance) were of course all over the place and the hard calcareous tubes of keel worms decorated rocks.

It is tempting to take a bite out of an edible crab then and there. Take away the legs and eyes and they look exactly like the pasties you buy from the local baker’s shop. The carapace  is a ruddy brown with ‘pie-crust’ edging. Shore crabs are smaller and olive green, while broad-clawed porcelain crabs, found under a rock, are tiny and the colour of wet sand. They are closer relatives of the hermit-crabs and lobsters, as their long antennae indicate.

We found several smiley-faced shannies lurking in rock pools, a five-bearded rockling (named for the barbels around the snout and on the chin and an eelpout, probably a pregnant female. Eelpouts have a long pregnancy (for a fish) of six months and give birth to live young. A butterfish had black dots all along its long dorsal fin. This specimen had bright yellow fins, but it is named for its extreme slipperiness when handled, due to the lack of scales and mucus-coated body. The butterfish found in the UK is different from the American species of the same name. A long-spined sea-scorpion was also found, a relative of the poisonous scorpionfishes.

Finds of the morning however were two worm pipefish. Related to seahorses, these fish have similar long, upturned snouts and are allegedly uncommon on the UK’s eastern seaboard. However, they are almost certainly overlooked, because they like to hide among long cylindrical seaweeds which camouflage them perfectly.

But that wasn't quite the end. While most of us were standing on our heads in rock pools, Rich was scanning the ocean wave with his scope and located a beautiful male scaup to add to the day's list.

Gaynor Chapman.