Our Secret beach - Flamborough, South Landing

In the previous blog, I described the bioblitz shoresearch at Filey and the finds we made. I also mentioned our secret beach, starfish, worries and inspiration. All this and more will be revealed here...

The day after our great day at FIley, my partner Andrea and I made our way to Flamborough South Landing to experience a different search on a very different beach.

Flamborough has many different faces with north, east and south facing beaches. Seals and puffins are among the riches commonly on offer. South landing beach is the least known, with its white cliffs and expanses of sand, rocks and kelp - it’s one of Yorkshire's most mysterious and ultimately awesome beaches. I don’t mean awesome in the glib use of the word, but in the true sense of showing something much bigger than ourselves and not being able to describe it fully.

Flamborough South Landing Walkover survey

At Flamborough, we were taking a precise 'walkover' look at the beach. Ana laid out two buckets about 100 Metres apart facing towards the sea and took their geolocations using what3words.

We used these as a guide and counted only the species found between the visual lines created by the buckets. Once we reached the sea, exactly at low tide (Ana knows how to time the searches to make this happen, both for best use of low tide and the safety of the volunteers) - Ana geolocated the locations at the shores edge directly vertical to the previously placed buckets. This creates a square. Sadly, this meant that Andrea’s butterfish couldn’t be included as it was just outside the square. She did ask for a VAR replay, but it was deemed to be offside...a reference for football fans out there!

I’ve already told you what’s worried me just by asking a question about starfish. Now, I’ll let you know what’s inspired me. As we went down the seemingly uninspiring seaweed covered beach, we found, not surprisingly, I guess, many seaweed species, and many of the amazing species that live on the seaweed.

We found tiny crabs and we even attracted some young beachcombers who were full of questions. Ana took the time to answer them and hopefully inspire them for the future. As we moved down the beach, the finds changed, a hairy crab here, a velvet swimming crab there, until we got down to the lowest part when the number of crabs exploded.

Crabs under every rock, and once again mating velvet swimming crabs with their back legs adapted like flippers to allow them to swim, The amount of life was astounding - even another lobster, this time the common squat lobster.

We also found numerous sea squirts that like to live on rocks. It’s an animal that develops a backbone early in life when it swims in the sea. Later, it will attach to a rock and absorb the backbone whilst reorganising all of its internal organs to become totally floppy. It's amazing that in this one creature we can see an evolutionary journey that is not entirely forwards in direction.

Normally the place we were standing on would be under a metre and a half or more of water,  we were standing in the great kelp forest of the North Sea and seeing the creatures that lived there. We could see the breeding crabs and the life that inhabits this ever-changing zone. We could imagine how life first emerged from the sea and onto land. We could see the back and forth, the evolution and challenges, past and present, all in one landscape. Just to stand at the water’s edge viewing this vast kelp forest that stands between the world of air and the world of sea beneath the white cliffs, with all types of life teeming beneath your feet - who wouldn’t feel a real sense of awe?

Shoresearch is The Wildlife Trusts' national citizen science survey of the intertidal shore, the exciting world of extremes where the sea meets the land. It's a great way to explore your local coast, learn more about the wildlife found there and add to our understanding of this important habitat.

Volunteers are trained to identify and record the wildlife on shores across the UK. The data collected by this project helps experts to monitor our fragile sea life and better understand the effects of pollution, climate change and invasive alien species. Shoresearch data has been key to designating many of our Marine Conservation Zones. If you'd like to find out more about our amazing marine team then follow this link here