Rock Stars

Enter the enchanted world of the rockpool where marine beasties great and small scuttle, hide, and graze among the seaweed.

- Nick Upton

An urgent request from a photography agency appeared on my screen. I had a month to find and photograph 100 subjects tantalisingly described in Latin, for a new guidebook. I scanned the list – many of the names were reassuringly familiar, and I had a good idea of where to find them, though I’d have to scour the UK’s coastline and I’d need new gadgetry.

I’d first seen Lineus longissimus, the amazing bootlace worm, over 30 years before, curled into a sticky ball in a rockpool, and knew that a 55m Scottish specimen was the longest animal of any kind on record. Distant rockpooling memories surfaced of colourful sea slugs, sea squirts and beady-eyed blennies. In a former life, I’d studied the bizarre sex life of tiny crustaceans and taught seashore ecology, before jumping at the chance to work with David Attenborough at the BBC. I spent the next 25 years making wildlife films around the world, but never lost the thrill of delving into British rockpools on family holidays. I welcomed the challenge of securing shots for a new seashore guidebook.

OPERATION ROCKPOOL

I began by building a ‘rockpool cam’. It cost less than £30 in DIY materials but could only be dipped carefully into shallow pools; what could go wrong? Armed with rockpool cam, maps and tide tables, I headed for the huge kelp beds and rocky intertidal outcrops and rockpools of Scotland in early July, where the water is crystal clear and marine fauna can cope with strong waves. I reached North Berwick the next morning as a big tide was falling. The sea was unusually calm as I waded among floating kelp fronds, camera in hand.