I've been neglecting the nature table this year Last week I did have some excellent beach combing thanks to storm Anthoni though.
This is a By The Wind Sailor which is similar to a jellyfish but floats on the ocean surface with it's little sail raised feasting on plankton as it goes where the wind takes it. Beach combing lore says that when you find these on the beach you will soon be finding a lot of man made stuff following on the next tides. This turned out to be true as you will see...
More worryingly I also found a Portuguese Man O'war which has a similar sailing technique but is potentially much more harmful to humans and animals.
I've also never seen so many shark and ray egg cases on one beach before.
The four big ones on the left are Blond Ray, then two Thornback Ray, a Small Eyed Ray, three Spotted Ray, a tiny dogfish one and then two Nursehound. There were probably ten times this number but I just kept a few to verify the ID to log them on the recording site.
Sadly the bulk of what I found was man-made and mostly plastics. I took two binbags of rubbish home with me for sorting. In beachcombing terms though the plastics were actually very interesting and I'll do a separate post on them.
I've no idea how long this bottle was at sea as the label was long gone but it had been colonised by Buoy Barnacles which either make their own float or attach to other floating objects to travel around.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I was quite surprised by the plastics. It took a while to sort out but I found plastic water bottles from Spain and France, and bottle lids from much further away. These five are highlights for me. Top left is from China (Master Kang brand apparently), top right is Dirfys water from Greece and the bottom row are all ISM (Industrias San Miguel) from the Dominican Republic.
This is a lobster pot tag. The code ME15 means it was valid for the 2015 fishing season in Maine, USA.
This bottle lid was anonymous but had clearly been at sea for years going by the colonies of corals and marine worms that has used it. Same with the black lid below.
I wonder how long it's been since someone brushed their teeth with this
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
The micro-plastics were the worst though. All the 'pebbles' you can see in this photo are plastic.
The jar on the left is all the ones I collected this year and the jar on the right was all I could find in a few days last year. I could have collected 100 times this amount this year sadly.
Plenty of pre-micro bits too. Mostly too far gone to recognise but there's glow sticks from the fishing in there, a Nerf dart, parts of shotgun shells and even a lamb docking ring. This is a small sample.
A label from Somerfield orange juice. The company brand was dead before 2011.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
The piece of plastic de resistance though is this Lego speargun. Traceable as one of 53,120 identical pieces that were lost in a shipping container spill off Cornwall in 1997 (Thanks to the kids for lending me a Lego man to hold it for the photo). It's a bit bent but for 26 years at sea it's survived very well.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I wondered which local kids had been neatly chalking their initials all over on my path. I was confused by the white marks. Then I see that Mrs Slug has just graduated from art college.
I found this on the community plot and thought - this is an odd rock I have never seen here before. I thought it must be a piece of flint someone had put there as decoration. It felt like it and weighed the same. But no! It is a degraded fruited fungal body. All life was attached. It has plants growing through it, cement welded into it (the beige sandy stuff below), stones, leaves and sticks inside it, like it had grown absorbing whatever was around. Smells strongly of mushroom, but - so heavy! Perhaps it had absorbed a lot of rain in the last few days, or maybe there are more rocks inside the fruit. It must have been large to start with.
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I'm not good on lizard id, I'm afraid.