Blogs and Guides

I spend a great deal of my time in rock pools. As a PhD candidate at the University of Plymouth, it’s kind of my job. It is often back-aching, knee-busting, solitary work. Scrambling over barnacle-speckled rocks, slipping on splayed kelp, I stop to stoop over glassy pools of water, bits of ocean left behind by the tide’s retreat. Professionally, I study these places and the animals that live here. Personally, these spaces, the ever-shifting boundary zones where sea and land collide, are my favourite places to visit and explore.

There can’t be many social gatherings that are given over to celebrating the humble limpet(!), but that is exactly what happened at the Seco Lounge in the Royal William Yard on Thursday 29th Oct. 2022 with a ‘Loving Limpets’ social evening. The Rock Pool Project had put together an evening of expertise and sharing that revealed all sorts of facts about these crusty little pyramids, familiar to every beach visitor, but so little understood. Co-founder Alan Smith acted as compère for the event, with the organisation’s Falmouth branch being linked in via Zoom.

The broad-clawed porcelain crab is a charismatic little rock poolers favourite. It is the most common species of porcelain crab found in the UK and can often be found clinging tightly to the underside of rocks below mid tide level.

On Saturday the 8th October our Plymouth Blue Recovery Rangers, Rock Pooling Families and a healthy dose of Rock Pool Project volunteers & team members, grabbed their passports and set off aboard the wonderful Edgcumbe Belle. The course was set for Cremyll, Cornwall on reportedly the oldest passenger ferry route in the UK. Luckily, the waters were calm as we approached Kernow, with not a pirate in sight!

Our second species in focus features probably the most popular new arrival to our shores in recent years. Certainly in Cornwall, where this little crab is named after the region's patron Saint

The Cushion star (Asterina gibbosa) is a little, well camouflaged starfish that is commonly found in rockpools on many of the UK coasts.