Following up on February Half Term which saw us host our first monthly event at Castle Beach for the year, we are now going to be advertising some information about hotels from some of our favourite rock pooling locations in Cornwall, along with information about the hotels!
Galathea squamifera, the common squat lobster, is a species of intertidal crustacean. Don’t be fooled by the name- these fancy fellows are actually more closely related to hermit crabs than lobsters.
We had just wrapped up our Beach Day activities, tallied up the points, and announced the winners of our bioblitz competition. In the summer months we run a ‘See Our Shore’ session, complete with a mobile rock pool so that the general public can view some of the wildlife we have found. I decided to hang behind in hopes of finding a Spider Crab to add to the collection. We often come across these magnificent creatures in the low shore pools.
The beadlet anemone (Actinia equina) is small red anemone that looks like red circular blobs on rockpools and is found on most UK rocky shores. They only reveal their short tentacles when underwater and use the base of their body as a strong sucker to keep them attached to the shore.
With their bunny-like head tentacles and charismatic expressions, these marvelous molluscs are always sure to bring a smile to your rock pool adventures.
The rock pool shrimp (Palaemon elegans) is very common in our rockpools and is often confused with other shrimp species like the common prawn (P. serratus). P. elegans has a transparent body with dark brown stripes along its carapace and six abdominal segments with yellow and blue banded legs. They can be differentiated from other shrimp species by their rostrum (a long appendage that looks like the shrimp’s nose and has several serrations). P. elegans has a much straighter rostrum than P. serratus with 8-9 serrations, 2-3 are behind their eyes. These shrimp can get to 63mm in length but are usually found much smaller than that; around 30mm.
