Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2015 | Page 85

COUNTRY LIFE

Round the
T

rockpools

he Island’s amazing intertidal marine
life was celebrated on Saturday at
Crab & Ships, a rockpooling day with
a difference! Arc Consulting ran the free
event at Bembridge Forelands to help with
a nature element for this year’s ‘Festival
of the Sea’, with listening to crabs with a
hydrophone, making tiny ships to join in
with Round the Island Race with reeds
picked from the shoreline, and of course
plenty of rockpooling.
Ian Boyd explains ‘We ran the event at
Forelands for the ‘Festival of the Sea’ and
over 50 people came to join in with the
seashore exploration while the Round The
Island sails passed endlessly by! We used
a hydrophone to amplify a tank of shore
crabs over the sands, while everyone’s
reedboats were launched in the rockpools
in a mini-Round the Island Race, and
the survey trays filled with dog whelks,
topshells, periwinkles, porcelain crabs,
prawns and shannies. A special find was
the spectacularly orange colonial sea squirt
Morchellium argus.’
Arc Consulting’s next rockpooling
adventure will be Under the Pier in Ryde on
Saturday August 29.

Photo: F inding a porcelain crab

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