Last Sunday I ventured to the north coast for a rock pool ramble with Matt Slater of the Cornwall Wildlife Trust (see this great blog) and the local marine conservation group (who also have a nice blog). I actually had never rock pooled at the north coast before (shame on me) and so it was nice to see this exposed habitat, quite different from my main haunts at Castle Beach in Falmouth and Trefusis Point in Flushing:

The rocks were much more bare and the number of animals a lot lower. However, there were quite some seaweeds. I finally saw (the edible) Laver Porphyra spp (probably Black laver Porphyra dioica):

Another edible species, Dulse Palmaria palmata, was incredibly common here:

I won’t add too many seaweed pics in this post, but I liked this shot of Serrated wrack Fucus serratus:

Brown and yellow Flat periwinkles Littorina obtusata (or possibly Littorina mariae, I did not bother to check) where common:

We found a Shore cling fish Lepadogaster lepadogaster and a Five-bearded rockling Ciliata mustela:

I found a couple of pieces of a branched seaweed covered in the bryozoan Electra pilosa:

All in all a good session. I hope to go back soon to take better pictures of the seaweeds!