Rockpools!

I've just enjoyed two super-low tides here on Skye with dry weather throughout and mostly blue skies. The lows fell at a sensible time of day and, despite the very cold east wind dropping apparent temperatures into the minus figures, by staying on the sheltered west coast I largely missed the brunt of the cold. And LOTS of lovely sea creatures were found! Largely, it has to be said, thanks to my companion on both days, Neil 'Spiderman' Roberts, an ace naturalist and a pan-species lister at heart. He just doesn't know it yet (I'm working on him...)

Just look at him ferreting around finding all the good stuff whilst I hold the camera...

This was on the first of two days spent at the shore, the location was Trumpan which is where I typically head to look for Minke Whales and dolphins during the summer months. I had no idea that there were rockpools beneath the headland, great ones they are too. The Oarweed in this image is about three feet long and is typically several feet beneath the waves. Not the easiest of terrains to clamber across but, as Neil mentioned, we've never broken a leg yet.  

Day two was spent here at Eabost, bright skies but it was bloody cold!

As you can see, wrack over boulders typifies the lower beach at Eabost, though there are hundreds of shallow rockpools higher up the beach where the wrack is less dominant. Once the tide dropped (it's only halfway out in these two images) we found an area of gravelly sands dominated by Snakelocks Anemones and Netted Dog Whelks, neither of which we encountered anywhere else at either site.

The Snakelocks Anemones here come in two colour forms, pale brown and vivid green with purple tips. The colour exhibited depends upon the quantity of Symbiodinium microadriaticum residing inside the anemone's tentacles. Symbiodinium microadriaticum is a microscopic single-celled organism, akin to an alga, and can be found inside various marine organisms including jellyfish, anemones and soft corals. It is generally accepted that well-lit anemones have the largest number of photosynthesising cells living inside their tentacles and hence are green coloured, whereas shaded (or stressed/ill) anemones have less and tend to be brown coloured. And yet, time after time, we saw green anemones situated adjacent to brown anemones. It did appear to me that most of the green ones were small-sized anemones. Maybe they are more resilient to the ever-warming sea temperatures? Maybe the brown ones are environmentally stressed? I just don't know, certainly most of the Snakelocks present were of the brown type. Either way, the species is abundant here!  

Elegant Anemone looking a tad inelegant

Dahlia Anemone, a variable species that comes in a range of colours

Devonshire Cup Coral - closed and feeding

Just to finish up with the cnidarians, I have seen Devonshire Cup Coral before. Not often, just a handful of times in fact, but I've only ever seen them as in the upper image - closed whilst out of water. So when Neil called me over to see the first Devonshire Cup Coral of the day, I slipped and scrambled my way across the rocks and was positively overjoyed to see that this individual was fully open, bizarre tentacles wafting in search of prey items. And just look at the tentacles (click on the image and it will enlarge). What weird structures!! I spent a long time taking decidedly mediocre images of this beauty. Thirty minutes later I found my own, only to realise that I'd circled back to the same rockpool and had re-found the same coral. I did this twice more, would you believe! "Oh aye, another one eh? And is this one in the corner of a wee pool too?" Neil mocked, haha!

Edible Sea Urchin enjoying a spot of sunbathing

Edible Sea Urchin in a rockpool - above and beneath the surface images

Shore Urchin marching its way across a rockface in search of prey

Common Brittlestars were precisely that. We saw lots of them!

Black Brittlestars were less common, though usually in gangs of 6 or 7 where they did occur

This Spiny Starfish was huge, seen here attempting to exit a small rockpool

A good number of Common Starfish were found, usually on the underside of boulders

We started finding a few 'squatties', which are the squat lobsters. A couple of small Olive Squat-lobsters were first up, soon followed by a couple of the larger, brighter Spiny Squat-lobster. Here's one perched on Neil's finger, followed by one I spotted on the side of a boulder

It was around about this time that I spied a pair of claws slowly recede beneath a rock right beside my foot. Larger than any squattie I'd ever seen, yet far smaller than any Lobster I've seen. Intrigued, I gently lowered my camera into the water, aimed it in the general direction of where the claws had disappeared and clicked the button a few times, hoping for the best. The best was this...

I have no idea what this is!

I've rotated these pictures 180 degrees, they are actually upside down. Look closely, there's something with big eyes and outstretched claws almost hidden away in the dark, looking straight at the camera. Could it be a young Lobster? Would a Lobster cling upside down under a rock? Answers on a postcard (or in a comment) please!

Neil soon called me over, he'd caught something and had it in a container. I slip-slid my way over the rocks and soon found myself looking at a shrimp with lobster-style claws. That's cool, Neil! 

Hooded Shrimp Athanas nitescens - wow!

I was blown away by this small shrimp, I didn't recognise the name that Neil was calling it by, all I knew is that I'd never seen anything like it before in my life and that it was very cool indeed. I'd definitely remember seeing something like this, it's such a distinctive beast! Later that evening I discovered that I'd seen Hooded Shrimp before, in Cornwall back in 2014. So much for "definitely remembering something like this"...

I think this is a recently moulted Pagurus bernhardus

And this little cutie is Anapagurus hyndmanni

A very typical view of  Pagurus bernhardus

Though very occasionally they will strike a pose for the camera

You know those boring white tubeworm casts you see on rocks at the beach..?

I thought I was looking down onto the top of a very small anemone, about 1cm diameter or less. When I reached down to grab the pebble in question, the 'anemone' disappeared into a tubeworm cast. Ah right, this was the tubeworm Spirobranchus triqueter lamarcki (correctly redet by Mark - cheers buddy!), not an anemone at all! I placed my hand underwater, camera aimed at the tube, and waited. And waited. Eventually the worm inside decided that the danger had passed and slowly, ever so slowly, emerged before unfurling its beautiful filter tentacles (there's probably a technical term for them) by which time my hand was so numb that I almost couldn't press the button to take an image. Luckily it was worth the effort, tubeworms such as these are filter feeders and their fan is a thing of surprising beauty when seen closely. 

I realise that this is a very long post, and I haven't even touched on various families and groups of organisms that we also encountered. But two that are worth mentioning here are this pair of marine isopods, neither of which I had seen before and one of which is a damn good record for this part of the world. 

This is Janira maculosa. Neil has seen these before but it was new for me

And this is Stenosoma acuminatum, a very rarely recorded isopod indeed

The Stenosoma acuminatum had us perplexed until we reached for the book (because who doesn't go out rockpooling with a copy of Intertidal Marine Isopods in their volumous pocket...) I kept saying that I'd never seen an Idotea with a telson as elongated as this thing had, and Neil wholeheartedly agreed. Trouble was, we had the wrong genus. According to the NBN Atlas, iRecord and BMIG, Stenosoma is mostly recorded in the far southwest of Britain, ie a long way away from Skye. Warren Maguire runs the recording scheme for these things and happens to be based in Scotland. He says he has renewed hope that he may one day find it for himself, now that he knows it's on Skye. That's nice, I like it when that sort of thing happens. 

Netted Dog Whelks were racing across the seabed, siphons fully raised, They smell food!

We had both Arctic and Spotted Cowries in the rockpools. These used to be a form of currency!

I guess one of these Phascolosoma granulatum was feeling the cold..........

Because everybody loves a Blue-rayed Limpet!

I shall leave it there, I'll get around to things like the bryozoans, tunicates, sponges and sea slugs in the next instalment. I've compiled a working spreadsheet of the species we found on the two shores, so far between us we have named slightly over a hundred species. That's not bad going for a midwinter's rockpooling bash.