Exploration of West Beach Local Nature Reserve

Hi all

This is the first blog for the Friends of Ed the Bear. If you are a follower of my blog 'Adventures of Ed the Bear' you will know I spend much of the time travelling around the world learning about marine life and investigating conservation threats to the ocean.  You may not know this but the wildlife and coasts around the UK are just as fascinating and valuable.

So I will be enlisting the help of children and their 'bear friends' around the UK to visit these beaches and make a report of what they discover. This may be individual children, schools or at special events.

They will be the Friends of Ed the Bear. They will discover what the beach is made of, what animals live there, how people use the beach and any fascinating history such as lighthouses, piers and other structures.  They will also need to investigate any dangers to the beach and beach wildlife.

So while I am travelling raising awareness of global locations and marine conservation, through the Friends of Ed the Bear, we will also  be raising awareness of the wonderful beaches and fascinating wildlife we have on our own coast which is why I am visiting West Beach today.

We have invited children to come along with a friend to help us explore this beach. So while I will be helping out, the beach will also be explored by Ruff and Tiny – you will meet them soon.

I brought along my display to explain why I am travelling, wildlife I have seen and also what I have found out about global dangers such as climate change and what we can all do to help the oceans wildlife.

So this is Ruff

...and this is Tiny

Many Sussex beaches have roads, houses or other buildings at the top. West Beach is very different because it has sand dunes. Ed told us that the sand dunes were formed many years ago. The wind has blown sand up the beach which formed big hills made of sand called dunes.Special grasses such as marram grass grow on the dunes and their roots help to hold the sand dunes in place.

After a while, smaller flowering plants grow on the sand dunes and these are visited by bees and butterflies.

 Sand dunes can be easily damaged by people walking on them or lighting bonfires. If the vegetation becomes damaged, the wind can easiy erode the sand causing a big whole called a blow out.

These areas can then be easily damaged by people walking on them so this part of the sand dune is fenced off.

We were not allowed onto the sand dunes here but we found a sign that told people about some of the facsinating animals that live on the sand dunes.

Ed pointed out a big lump of vegetation that looked different from the rest of the sand dunes.

Ed said that underneath the vegetation was the remains of a fort similar to the one on Ed the Bear's beach at Shoreham. The fort at Shoreham is also a ruin but its not covered in vegetation like this one.

We found a pathway that allows people to walk through the sand dunes and down to the beach without causing any harm.

We followed the path to the end and reached the beach. there was a big area of pebbles which led to a sandy beach. Growing out of the pebbles were some more plants. Ed the Bear told me and Tiny that these were like the plants that grew on how own beach.

Ed said that this one is called sea kale and is a type of cabbage that lives on the beach.

He said that these beach plants are special because they can surive with very little water and soil and can survive the hot drying sun and wind.

Ed said this one was his favourite, yellow horned poppy.

Tiny said he would see what it smelt like but he said he could not smell anything.

Then we decided to go and explore the sandy part of the beach. There was a big pier along the side of the beach by the river.

This stops the beach sand from blocking the mouth of the river and stopping boats from travelling up to the harbour.

The river Arun travels for over 25 miles until it reaches the sea at Littlehampton.

Lots of animals are living or growing on the wooden pier. These are mussels and barnacles.

Ed the Bear said it was too dangerous for me or Tiny to climb higher so he said he would take a look.

Ed said that he could tell how much of the pier was underwater at high tide by how high the barnacles were growing.

We decided to explore the pools at the bottom of the pier. There were lots of animals attached to the rocks.

This is a sea anemone that has closed up because the tide is out.

This anemone in a pool is still open. It looks like a flower but the petals are actually tentacles that sting.

They catch small fish and other tide pool animals which they eat. Ed said we should not touch them just in case.

We found two sea snails that eat seaweed. This is a limpet.

and the periwinkle.

Ed the Bear pointed out a sea snail called a dog whelk.

This sea snail can drill a hole through the shell of a mussel using its radula – sharp teeth on a conveyor belt like tongue. The dog whelk makes a special chemical that softens the mussel shell, making it easier to drill the shell, but it will still take a couple of days.  

Once the hole has been drilled through the shell the dog whelk injects another chemical that paralyses the mussel.  Digestive chemicals are secreted into the shell and the dog whelk sucks up the mussel-soup.

However, Ed told us that the mussels can fight back. Mussels hold onto rocks by making special threads. When  a dogwhelk is feeding, the mussels living next to it can attach their threads to the dogwhelk so it becomes trapped and can't eat any of the otehr mussels.

We found a dog whelk that had been tied up by mussels. If you look closely at the pictures you can see some of the threads.

We saw some small fish in a pool and Ed lent me his fishing net.

 We decided to catch some so we could have a  closer look.

We put some of the fish in a tray to get a closer look. These are young common blennies. They live in the pools where it is safer than being out at sea. They also find lots of food that includes tiny shrimp-like animals.

We carefully let the fish go and went searching for my animals. Tiny spotted a crab scuttling across a pool.

I borrowed the net and searched in some of the deeper pools.

I managed to catch 2 green shore crabs that were camouflaged in the green seaweed.

The crabs walked side ways with thier jointed legs. I made sure that I kept my paws away from the crabs pincers that could give a nasty nip if the crab felt threatened. The crab uses its pincers to protect itself and also for feeding.

Ed said that lots of sea cretaures lived underneath the sand and were just beneath our feet in the sand. This is the worm cast of a soft bodied lug-worm.

It lives in a burrow where the worm finds food and hides from animals that would try to eat it.

Ed said it was a good place for animals to hide from predators and to keep cool and wet on a hot day.

Ed decided to dig a hole in the sand to see what it was like and buried hemself up to his neck. He said it might be good for worms and other beach wildlife but it wasn't a good idea for a bear. Ed said he couldn't move through the sand like a worm and it wasn't very nice. So he asked us to dig him out again.

As we looked down the beach we saw some cormorants flying past. Ed said that cormorants visted his beach.

He said that they were related to pelicans, but they did not have a throat pouch like a pelican has. Ed had seen some pelicans in the USA during his travels.

We had a look around the beach to see if there were any dangers to the beach. we did not see any litter or other dangers. There lots of people on the beach having fun.

Some where paddling, some were sun bathing while others were having a swim. We also noticed some people playing tennis and another group were flying a kite.

They were all enjoying the beach.

We left Ed the Bear watching the birds and we walked up the top of the beach to go and Tiny found a funny looking object in the seaweed.

We looked around and found some other strange objects.

We decided to take them back to the centre and find out what they were.

We discovered that the first object was a dogfish egg case. A baby shark called a dogfish hatched from the egg case before it was washed up onto the beach.

The other object was a mass of snail eggs from a common whelk, again then ehhs had alraedy hatched. Exploring the beach for objects washed up on the beach is a good way of finding out what animals live further out to sea.

Ed came back up to the centre and we thanked him for allowing us to help him explore the beach. Ed said it was so much more fun exploring with others rather than being on your own.

It was a very busy but fun day so we found a quite corner to have a rest.

I hope you all enjoyed discovering the beach with me, Tiny and Ed the Bear. Ed is hoping that he will be able to encourage others to explore their own local beach, so why not visit your own local beach and see what you can discover.

Bye from Ruff, Tiny and Ed the Bear.