Cornish Critters: Part II

Some more pictures of Cornish coastal wildlife. It is quite difficult to take good pictures of beasties in my aquarium using a camera but somehow iphones (with HD) work great; I might start up an aquarium blog on the side as soon as I get one! Below the bivalve Chlamys varia. Loose valves are easy to find on the beach, but they live in somewhat deeper water so I have only encountered a live specimen in a rock pool once. Two grey top-shells Gibbula cineraria are clinging on.The best way to find things is to turn around rocks, here two common echinoderms: cushion stars Asterina gibbosa and  a brittle star (not determined at species level).At low tide, you don’t even have to get into the water to pick up creatures, here two shannies Lipophrys polis, the most common rock pool fish locally.The next picture is a bit crap but in my defence I had my  son strapped to my breast when kneeling to take it and he is not as enthusiastic about rock pooling as his dad (yet). It shows three worm pipefish Nerophis lumbriciformis. Difficult to spot as they look just like a piece of brown seaweed but very easily caught by hand when you do. Unfortunately also very difficult to spot in my aquarium!A broad-clawed porcelain crab Porcellana platycheles (missing one of its broad claws). Snakelocks anemone Anemonia viridis. There is a greenish colour variety with purple tips as shown here as well as a purplish/brownish colour variety. They attach to a substrate (rocks, seaweeds) but have no problem wandering around. Apparently, the purple ones are bullied by the green ones upon encounter but I have not witnessed this behaviour in my aquarium yet.Britain is home to around 700 species of seaweed and the Cornish south coast is especially species rich. Here the red seaweeds Solier’s red string weed Solieria chordalis (left) and Dudresnay’s whorled weed Dudresnaya verticillata (I think).Finally some microbiology: lichens. A symbiosis of cyanobacteria or green alga supplying photosynthesis products and a fungus supplying a protective habitat.P.S. for more posts like this, see my rock pooling/snorkelling/aquarium keeping blog An Bollenessor