Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2016 | Page 76

Country life

Photo: Rockpooling by Matthew Roberts

w

oh we do like to be
beside the seaside!
By Lianne de Mello, Hampshire & Isle of Wight
Wildlife Trust PR and Communications Officer

76

We all like to be beside the sea; the
smell of salt spray, the gentle lapping
of the waves on the shore, the soft sand
between our toes…

have on our doorstep.

But take a dip beneath the surface of the UK’s seas
and there’s so much more to see than first meets
the eye. Seals weave in and out of sunlit kelp forests,
cuttlefish flash all the colours of the rainbow, starfish
graze along the muddy seabed and sharks zip
through the open waters.

There’s so much variety in our marine habitats
beyond seagrass beds - close to shore, rocky reefs
create rockpools that teem with anemones and
starfish, while further out to sea, deep-water corals
provide nursery sites for many of our commercial fish
such as cod and crab.

Many people consider the sea simply as a huge
expanse of water – vast, deep and maybe a little scary.
But a huge variety of habitats can be found here.
Many people are unaware of the wonderful, nationally
scarce, seagrass meadows which we are fortunate to

We can get a glimpse of life beneath the waves at
our local beach. Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife
Trust’s top wildlife experience for August is exploring
your local coastline, so here are some things you can
do with your family on a seashore safari:

www.visitilife.com

Aug/Sep 2016_MASTER .indd 76

In the shallows in and around the Solent, seahorses
and bass hide among underwater seagrass meadows
just off the Needles. As well as providing a great
nursery habitat for young fish, it’s also the only true
flowering plant in the sea and it also absorbs harmful
nutrients.

16/08/2016 15:21