Kirsty Andrews contemplates the wonders that dwell in and around the pink sea fans of the South West of England
KIRSTYANDREWS
Live long and prosper
Kirsty Andrews contemplates the wonders that dwell in and around the pink sea fans of the South West of England
The theme for this column came to me on a dive – which is not unusual actually; I often take notes while diving. Of course, I mean mental notes rather than actual paper and pen ones, that would be far too much of a distraction from the underwater fun. Although thinking about it I do sometimes take wetnotes with me, so maybe next time … food for thought.
This was a fairly unremarkable dive at first; unfavourable winds had led us to a back-up site on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. The water felt a little milky and the key feature was the usual Cornish abundance of pink sea fans. As is my habit, I loosely examined many of them as I drifted past, for hitchhikers of interest.
Believe it or not, pink sea fans are thought of as nationally rare and globally vulnerable, due in part to damage from bottom trawling to this slow growing species. As a result, they are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and subsequent biodiversity initiatives. I did a little bit
of work in biodiversity many moons ago and remember noting it, alongside the much more eye-catching basking shark for example, but this was before I’ d done much diving on the South Coast.
If you mention the protections to anyone who’ s dived South coast wrecks, or indeed any rocky reefs around the area of Cornwall
I’ m currently staying at, you’ d get a blank look and a laugh. They are so numerous across flat
Sea fan anemones patches of rusty old wreck, or in these reefs, that they seem to go on forever – I’ d never attempt to count what must be several hundred that I swim past in the scope of a single dive. It’ s not much of a fun game to count the sea fans, but it’ s of more interest to look for the other animals that can be found on them. There is a nudibranch that is also quite common( many times renamed but now, I gather, Candiella odhneri) the rings of its eggs are often a giveaway as it is pretty well camouflaged against the polyps of the fan.
That too becomes less of a challenge over time; I barely give them a second glance these days, but I do award myself finder points for seeing the rarer sea fan anemone, Amphianthus dohrnii which also graces the stems of sea fans, but much less commonly in my experience. I’ ve found Cornwall to be the most prolific location for them and sometimes see a dozen or so at once, but that is notable. I’ ve yet to spot one on a South Coast wreck, but that may be because I’ m not looking hard enough, distracted by rusty triple expansion engines and prop shafts.
On my dive yesterday, after contemplating the fans, I found a delightful wall leading me deeper to an astonishing crack jammedfull of large-ish crawfish, watched over by a common octopus. Two superstars of underwater 2025 which previously would have been highly noteworthy but now are almost expected, though I’ d never take either delightful species for granted. It remains to be seen whether this wondrous year of octopus will become the standard or whether they will disappear as abruptly as they appeared with us. I hope that these will prosper as well as the pink sea fans appear to be, and I look forward to monitoring their progress over the years. �
Pink sea fan colony on the Persier wreck
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