Shore Of A Good Day Out

Few are lucky enough to explore the seabed but you can get an idea what is in the Irish Sea by exploring our beaches and rockpools. Lancashire Wildlife Trust’s Alan Wright investigates.

- Alan Wright

NATURE moments can come thick and fast when you wander along beaches and causeways from the Sefton coast, around the Fylde, onto Morecambe Bay and in to Cumbria.

Whale and dolphin watches take place throughout the summer months and there have been sightings of grey seals, harbour porpoise, pods of bottle-nosed dolphins and turtles from the shoreline.

In rockpools, a world of wildlife can be discovered including a variety of crabs. The common shore crab is, as its name suggests, Britain’s most common crab with pointed spines around the front of its “face” and its colour ranges from green to red and brown.

It lives in this region among rocks and seaweed from the low tide mark to mid shore, feeding on waste vegetation and small animals. Heysham is a great place to find it, as well as Cumbria and other man-made areas around Liverpool and Blackpool.

Another crab you will find in your local rockpools is the tasty sounding edible crab, identified by its broad orange body. You will have seen its shells on the beach and you could find its black-tipped pincers too. This crab can be found by divers up to depths of 100 metres.