Tide Pool and Microscope Cam Event

Rock pools and microscope demonstration was the second of our rock pooling events. 2 weeks ago we ran our annual family tide pool event at the beach inside the mouth at Shoreham Harbour, by the Shoreham Fort.

Today I helped run the second event for Friends of Shoreham Beach (LNR). Again families were invited to collect a few sea creatures to observe. This time, instead of placing them in special tanks at the top of the beach, the creatures were brought up to me, based in the Shoreham Fort Nissan Hut.  Each creature was then placed underneath a microscope cam and projected on a TV screen.

So the aim was to find some of the smaller tide pool animals to examine.

Some of the larger animals included prawns, shore crabs, sea anemones, a cockle and a rock goby. There were also smaller specimens of prawns, common goby, amphipods, marine worms, edible periwinkle.

Various small juvenile shore crabs were also collected each having its own unique camouflage pattern providing clues to the part of shore the crab lived.

Highlight of the session had to be the two juvenile pipefish  (above)collected by one of the children.

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We have found juvenile pipefish on previous occasions but always a rare find on this beach.

A very enjoyable morning, lots of fascinated and excited visitors.

Annual Rock Pool Event at Shoreham

Another very successful annual rock pooling day at Shoreham. Visitors were very enthusiastic and full of questions. Due to the fact that many people were still queuing up after the start time I divided the briefing session into two groups.  

I asked at the beginning of the briefing and about ¼ to ⅓ had taken part before the rest were new to the event. At least half of the people were local, (difficult to be exact as they were in two separate groups). However one family had come from Surrey and another from London (and had travelled down that day. Some local visitors had brought along family who were staying with them at the time.

 During the event lots of people called me over to see what they had caught or to identify something that was attached to a rock or in a pool – which was quite constant.

I also spoke to people around the aquarium tanks at the top of the beach where we had housed a few of the animals collected by visitors.  

I also encouraged people to go up and look at the tanks (e.g. if they showed me an anemone in a pool that was closed I would talk to them about anemones and then encouraged them to see the open anemones in the tanks, etc).

This seemed to be a good balance because people are particularly interested in knowing about the things they have found themselves.

During the event a large net was discovered and was slowly being uncovered by the tide. There were many crabs tangled in the net which visitors and event staff helped to rescue.

There were also fish and other animals trapped in the net which probably attracted the crabs in the first place.  T

The live animals were rescued and the net cut into pieces and removed from the beach.

While nothing very unusual was found this time, except a large flounder, we did find many shore crabs, beadlet anemones, shrimps, prawns, common blenny, a juvenile solonette, sea slater, chiton and much more. We also observed many sea birds including tern and cormorant and we also got a quick glimpse of the kingfish as it flashed past the beach.