rock pooling - The Wildlife Trusts

The Wildlife Trusts
Visit some of our favourite rockpooling beaches
around the UK!
Rockpooling © Nicola Davison
The Isle of Mull has a wonderful variety of rockpooling sites, from sheltered lochs to rugged open coast.
Favourites include Calgary, Loch Na Keal, Uisken and Knockvologan Beach. Not only will you find urchins,
starfish, crabs, squat lobsters and jellyfish, but if you’re very lucky you might spot otters playing on the shore.
Seals, porpoises, dolphins and minke whales are also regular visitors around the island’s coast.
Fun at the beach ©Lisa Chilton
Killiedraught Bay, within the St Abbs and Eyemouth Voluntary Marine Reserve, is one of the finest
rockpooling sites in Scotland. At low tide you’ll find seaweeds such as bladderwrack and kelp, as well as
animals such as the breadcrumb sponge, bootlace worm and butterfish. The cliffs at St Abbs Head, a short way
up the coast, are home to 50,000 seabirds in spring and summer, including guillemots, razorbills, kittwakes and
shags.
West Runton is one of the best sites for rockpools and fossils on the east coast of England. The chalk and flint
shore has lots of nooks and crannies for rockpool creatures. It’s also a great place to look for fossils such as
belemnites (a type of squid). In 1990, around 600,000 years after it died, the remains of the West Runton
Elephant were discovered after winter seas eroded the cliffs.
The chalk cliffs and reefs around the Isle of Thanet in Kent are internationally renowned, and the coast is
protected as a Special Area of Conservation. There is easy access to beautiful shores with imposing cliffs and
chalk stacks, and the rockpools are rich in plant and animal life. A local rockpool speciality is the unfortunately
named ‘boring piddock’, a mollusc that bores holes in the chalk.
Seven Sisters in East Sussex has a rock platform beneath the cliffs where, over millions of years, the sea has
worn away the chalk and left a maze of channels and pools that fill and empty as the sea rises and falls. There is
a wonderful diversity of creatures including velvet swimming crabs, porcelain crabs and strawberry anemones.
An added bonus is the sight of herons and little egrets hunting in the pools, and if you look skywards you may
also glimpse a peregrine falcon.
Bembridge Ledges, on the Isle of Wight, is a spectacular site for rockpooling, with its series of flat limestone
ledges stepping down the shore. You can clearly see bands of different coloured seaweeds, providing shelter for
anemones, periwinkles, topshells and a variety of crabs and fishes. On low spring tides you can access the
shallow lagoons just offshore of the main ledges. These are home to meadows of eelgrass, an important nursery
ground for shrimps and fish.
Bill Oddie voted Kimmeridge in Dorset the top rockpooling site in the country. The bay experiences a doublelow tide, giving more than three hours to explore the shore. A series of smooth rock ledges reaches far out into
the bay, allowing easy viewing of marine life. The clear, shallow water is an ideal habitat for a multitude of
rockpool creatures from anemones to sea slugs, as well as nurseries for juvenile fish.
Protecting Wildlife for the Future
The Wildlife Trusts
Visit any one of the 12 best rockpooling beaches
around the UK!
Wembury in South Devon is famed for its fantastic rockpooling and has featured in many TV programmes.
The sheltered slate reefs in this Voluntary Marine Conservation Area provide countless crevices for animals to
hide in, and wildlife thrives here. You can find at least eight types of crab, as well as spiny starfish, squat
lobsters, and fish such as blennies, gobies and rockling. Wembury Marine Centre runs 'rockpool rambles', see
www.wemburymarinecentre.org
Gyllyngvase Reef lies just below the coast road and promenade on Falmouth's waterfront. The many
rockpools are bursting with colourful life. In the shallow pools on the upper shore you’ll find winkles and
shrimps, while the deeper pools on the reef edge are full of squat lobsters and crabs. This accessible site is a
great place to enthuse young rockpoolers.
St. Agnes is a rockpool heaven. In common with other north Cornish sites, this is a sandy beach with boulders
and rocky outcrops. You'll find lots of different seaweeds, as well as topshells, winkles, limpets, dahlia
anemones, cushion stars and crabs. It's a good spot for fish too, including Cornish sucker fish, blennies,
rocklings and sea scorpions. Explore the overhangs and gullies for star seasquirts and a variety of sponges.
Rockpooling
Dahlia
© Sussex
anemone
Wildlife
© Paul
Trust
Naylor
There’s some great rockpooling at Cemlyn in North Wales, where you’ll find a range of different types of
shore within walking distance of each other. Take some time to lift up your head from the rockpools and
you’ll see terns flying close overhead with beaks full of fish. If you visit nearby Trwyn Cemlyn it’s always
worth keeping an eye out for seals, porpoises and dolphins. Never a dull rockpool ramble here!
The beach beside Maryport Golf Club in Cumbria has a reef of boulders within a stretch of sand.
Competition for space on the rocks is fierce. Unusually, the entire wildlife community here switches between
two alternate states – mussel beds and reefs of honeycomb worms - each with its own array of plants and
animals. Different parts of the beach are out of synch with each other, so you can often see both states in one
visit.
Dunseverick Harbour (near Portrush, Co Antrim, Northern Ireland) has the deepest natural pools in Northern
Ireland, where you can swim amongst an extraordinary range of marine plants and animals, including the sea
hare, china limpet and needle whelk. Rathlin Island nearby is home to sponges that are found nowhere else in
the world.
If you’re intending to go rock pooling alone, remember some of the basic safety rules, download our ‘seashore
code’ for further information.
The Wildlife Trusts’ National Marine Week is a great opportunity to enjoy a guided rockpool ramble at some
of the UK’s best sites. Visit www.wildlifetrusts.org and click on ‘Events’ then search under Themes for
‘Marine Week’
Protecting Wildlife for the Future