Marine Practical - Rocky Shores Visit

This was the excursion I was most looking forward to.  From childhood I have loved exploring rock pools at the beach and finding all sorts of amazing creatures not found where I lived. This outing proved even better than I anticipated.  We had fantastic weather, fortunately and enjoyed an amazing morning on Treasure Beach. The only down side was finding the beach absolutely covered in plastic litter that had apparently been washed down the storm water drains from the city, not coming in from the sea.  We were all thoroughly disheartened by the sight of it and when we asked Prof Tikkie why it wasn't cleaned up, he replied that this was not a popular swimming beach so why should they bother!  What??? This was astounding!  I had never come across someone with such an attitude before and we were all quite shocked.  We know that all this plastic is going to end up in the ocean causing untold amounts of disaster for the marine life.  It is heart-breaking to know that this is the general attitude of those in charge of KZN beaches.

Mr Wilson, one of our lecturers, equally astonished at the trash on the beach

We were instructed to find the different zones of a rocky shore and identify different phyla within each zone.  the uppermost zone is the Littoral zone and this is where Limpits and Whelks are found. It is the highest zone and spends a good deal of the time out of the water when it is low tide.  We were there during Spring low tide to give us the largest work area.

Duck Foot Limpit - Scutellastra longicosta - in the Littoral zone

Mulberry whelk - Morula granulata - with a hermit crab inside

Natal Rock Oysters - Saccostrea cuccullata -  in the oyster belts

The next zone is the Oyster belt.  This contains oysters, obviously as well as tube worms and where we started seeing the most amazing things called Zoanthids.  There were so many colours, and they lay in huge carpets.  They are similar to anemones but much smaller and very soft.  When they are open, their little tentacles are out.  If you touch them, they close and bring their tentacles in.  Really enjoyed finding them in their many colours.

Green Zonanthids - Zoanthus durbanesis

Tube Worm casings.  They are rock hard and feel like porcelain

Striped Topshell - Oxystele tabularis - with hermit crab emerging

Pustular triton shell - Argobuccinum pustulosum -  with hermit crab

Sandy Anemone - Aulactinia reynaudi

The next zone is the Upper and Lower Balanoids.  They are very similar with not too many different species.  Here we started finding these beautiful sea anemones, some sponges, thousands more Zoanthids, crabs, brittle stars and star fish and quite a few species of fish.  The rock pools were filled with water even though the tide was out and they were filled with life.

The above two are also Sand Anemones.  They occur in many different colours.

A cool crab hiding deep in the crevices of the rock pool for protection and to keep moist

We started seeing beautiful soft coral and sea weed at this stage.

Feather-duster Worm - Pseudobranchiomma longa - a sedentary worm

Sedentary worms are obviously sedentary and can't move around.  They live inside their small hard tubes and protrude their tentacles to filter their food from the surrounding water.

Eight-shell Barnacles - Octomeris angulosa - found in the Balanoids. 

Pot Hole Urchin - Stomopneustes variolaris - very interesting black urchin

Encrusting turret-sponge - Haliclona oculata

Crumb-of-bread sponge - Hymeniacidon perlevis

Berry caulerpa - Caulerpa peltata - a type of seaweed

Giant or Armadillo Chiton (pronounced Kiton) - Dinoplax gigas

Tufted Sea Cucumber - Holothuria cinerascens

Warty sea slug - Peronia peronii

Underside of the Warty sea slug

Unknown crab found in rock pool

Ghost crab?  Found on the sand

Dead-man's fingers - Splachnidium rugosum

These Dead-man's fingers are part of the Brown algae family (Ochrophyta) and falls under the heading "bladders and strings".  Never seen them before.  Its mucus protects it against desiccation during low tide.

Creeping codium - Codium prostratum

A strange spongy type seaweed that we at first thought was a sponge.  But no, its a living plant.

Intrepid sea-shore explorers - Elzanne, Bethia, Robyn and Anja

Poor Sue, rocky shores are slippery and cause finger damage, be warned.

I have long believed that what we say is what happens in our lives.  We speak our destiny.  Poor Sue and I were walking along the rocks and she started saying we should be careful not to fall when of course, it had to happen, she slipped and fell.  She put her hands out to cushion the fall and bent her ring finger right back, effectively dislocating it.  Lucky for her, it popped back in again but it left her right hand immobile and huge blue bruises all around her poor swollen finger.  (By the way, I am going to be very rich and live a long and happy life with everything that I want.... :) .... just speaking my destiny).

Hairy brittlestar - Ophiothrix fragilis

We found brittle stars and cushion starfish towards the end of our walk but not before which was quite an interesting conundrum.  It seemed to be the same zone but none of us could figure out why we did not see them at the start of our kilometre long walk.

A sea scorpion?

On our way back to the start, we came across this little thing which I was told was a sea scorpion but I don't find it in my guide book nor on the internet so I'm not quite sure what it is.  Very interesting.

And then there's the little story of the 3 whelks... When we got back to the hotel and to our rooms, Elzanne casually put a shell and two oysters that had some lovely sea weed growing on them down on the table in front of me while she went to freshen up.  I didn't think anything of it until the shell suddenly lifted up and started walking toward the end of the table!  I advised Elzanne that her "empty" shell had suddenly developed legs and she came running to find a hermit crab still in the shell.  I then remembered that I myself had put an "empty" shell in my pocket so I fished it out only to find tiny legs emerging from it as well.  We were all having a good laugh when Rehenza, who was sitting on her bed, suddenly came forward and confessed that she too had a small "empty shell" in her pocket.  She took it out and yes, it too had little legs poking out.  We now had a dilemma.  We were very far from the beach we had naughtily removed the shells from and had no way of getting back there.  We decided to take the shells (and the oysters, as they were still very much alive and would probably die) down to our section of beach and release them from their prison.  Unfortunately, once we got there, we realised we had absolutely no rocks what so ever to put them on.  What we did find was a large tree trunk that had washed up so we placed our captives underneath them and on them and hoped that the tide would take them out and help them to find some rocks to carry on their lives on.  If we ever go back to Illovo beach and find a whole colony of adapted hermit crabs living there, we will know it was our fault ... yikes!

And just so you know, I am still always looking for birds, this lovely little Yellow-fronted Canary was calling beautifully from the tree we chose to eat our lunch under.  :0)