Crabs and Crocks at Cow Bay by Castle Cornet, an event put on by La Societe – great fun and lots of wildlife.
Helpers Trevor and Andy admire Liz ‘Octopus’ Sweet’s headgear.
Meanwhile, Becky, Education and Conservation Leader, gets organised with the clipboards and reference books.
Eelgrass, a flowering plant, hugely important for marine ecosystems, stores carbon di-oxide very efficiently which is great news for the planet. It is right here in St. Peter Port Harbour. Oh yes, and eelgrass beds are in Belle Greve Bay.
The Velvet Swimming Crab, Necora puber, with its red eyes. This one was surprisingly docile – they feisty and give a good nip.
A Chancre, Cancer pagurus, showing its green eyes. this one has been in the wars and has lost a claw.
Montagu’s Crab, Xantho hydrophilus, has black tips to its claw, like the Chancre but its shell is very different .
A Butterfish, so called because it’s very slimy and hard to pickup. It survives well out of water. at low tide it will hide in rocky crevices or in seaweed. This one was quickly returned to a shady, damp area by a rock.
Blenny (I think) and a hermit crab.
After an hour, everyne had collected 40 species of animals and plants. The crab TBC (to be confirmed) I believe Andy Marquis later had an ID of Long-clawed Porcelain Crab. On the board, it has INNS written after its name, Invasive Non-native Species, as we weren’t sure what it was. It is a native crab but tiny (5mm) and only grows to 10mm so is easily overlooked and is not familiar.
I had to include one of Liz’s snazzy nail varnish, next to a tiny and very ridged Scallop.
Natural history of the Bailiwick of Guernsey 