We are in Brighton with the wonderful Jessica and Claudia to do some rock pooling
which is my favourite thing in the world to do. - Yey! - Yeah!
Would you like to briefly introduce what you do on YouTube?
I have a YouTube channel where I talk about
chronic illness, disabilities and LGBTQ+ things in a kind of fun and friendly
educational, informal way. - Great! - Brief!
And I'm her sidekick wife.
Nice. Great high self esteem there!
Firstly, most important question, what colour nets do you want?
- Blue - Not yellow - So red then?
- And these are the very fancy ones - I bought the expensive ones. - Wow! - Woo!
OK, so it was low tide a while ago so we just need to keep
an eye on the tides it will be coming in but let's just get going! - Yeah - OK
I have no depth perception so I can't tell how far away the rocks are so
- Well if they're getting bigger then you might be falling - Yeah yeah yeah
OK, we want to go out as far as possible now and then we'll work our way back in shore as we go along
So be careful its slippy - Yeah
- You are the most stylishly dressed rock pooler I have ever seen. It's amazing! - You just go shopping in ASDA
and people are like "Have you been to a wedding?" and she's like "No!"
So to start off rock pooling you get a bucket
and you fill it a little bit with water. That way anything you catch you can keep it nice and wet.
- That's a lot of water! - Oh, is it only meant to be a little bit? - Well it's just
we'll be carrying it around then you can pour out some of that. - You said 'fill the bucket' so I was like OK!
First off, we're not just looking for animals there's also seaweed here even though
it's really easy just to forget it and walk on it. This green... like the really green stuff...
- Like the proper seaweed looking stuff? - Yeah. This is called sea lettuce. - Uhuh - Oh because you can eat it?
- You can eat it. - She really wants some edible seaweed - It's very good for you!
- I mean, normally you would wash it but... - It was all a fad. You can eat seaweed with everything now. - But it is really good for you!
So the best thing to do is to stick your net in the water, give it a rootle around
the edges where there's weed or even better to lift up a rock and see what's underneath. - Ok.
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If we lift this up and there is something under there
I'll be very impressed cos as the first rock, I doubt there will be much...
Ooh there's a brittle star! There are several! - Aww!
So you can see like most starfish they have five arms - Yeah
But unlike most of the other starfish, brittle stars are really fast
and they actually wriggle around quite a bit more. - Aww, it looks like
Mr Ball Legs - What's Mr Ball Legs? - Ha ha yes it does!
From the Santa Clarita Diet on Netflix - Oh - You've gotta watch it
Where's its head?
So it doesn't have a centralised head as such
so the food, the entrance ... the mouth, the anus is all in that central disc on the underside
- OK - but each of these arms also has an awful lot of nerves
and if one breaks off they can grow more ones - Cool! - So yeah, first type of starfish
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- Are you OK? - Just to remind you all this is flat to me, OK?
- So how long have you been living in Brighton? How many years? - Ten
- Ten years, and in that time have you ever been rock pooling? - Never in Brighton! - No?
- No, like, we went to Cornwall and we went rock pooling. Why didn't we go rock pooling in Brighton?
- Yeah, I dunno, I just guess we never thought you could down here for some reason
- That's a hermit crab I think. It is a hermit crab! - Yeah! - Good spot!
So they find a shell, but empty shells of the right size are an incredibly scarce
resource here, and so they will fight with each other over who gets the right size shell.
When you see a hermit crab out of its shell, it's longer more like
a lobster than like a crab. - So it just like tucks? - Yeah, it curls itself around - There it is, look
So now you can see it's got its tiny little front claws - Hi! Hello!
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- What did you find? - It moved really quickly - Yep they always do
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Gotcha. Oh wow!!! - Ha ha ha ha - I've never seen one of these crabs before!
- Oh there were like three of them there - What type is it? - It's a porcelain crab!
They only grow about this big and you only find them on the underside of rocks which is why they're so hard to spot
- Oh I feel a bit mean because I like, we just dispersed their little family now
- They'll be fine I'm sure. They're still wet. But good spot! - Well done!
High five!
So do you often go looking for nature? - Yeah - We love nature
- Yeah? - We like foraging mushrooms - Not so much wet nature to be honest
- Foraging mushrooms? You've got to be good at knowing your mushrooms in order to forage them. - She is!
- Well I only pick the ones I know.
If you can hold this, there is a fish just there...
So this is a sea scorpion also known as a bull head
And it doesn't have a swim bladder so it sinks when it's not swimming a bit like sharks.
- Oh - Oooh
- That was a good "Oh" - That was a great "Oh"!
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I'm trying to see if it has one continuous dorsal fin. No it's got two
dorsal fins so this is a goby rather than a blenny - Ahh! - Oh!
But they are very similar fish. - And are they in the same family? - No, I don't think they are.
- Oh! - So they do just look incredibly similar and they
all come in loads of different colours because they camouflage really well
so you can't base it on the colouring. So the dorsal fin is the one that runs
along the back - if you think like a dolphins fin is the dorsal fin. So a
blenny will have a single one going all the way down the back whereas a goby
will have it split into sections. - Oh, OK!
- I must say, I do feel quite epic! - Like an adventurer!
So this is a bigger shore crab - Oh yeah! - And this one is a female!
- Yeah, rounder - So you can see how it's rounded with a little bit of a tip at the end
- It's a pretty one!
We should rename you Claudia the crab hunter! That's three different species now!
All my mushroom foraging training, I've got a eye for something
- Yeah, you've got a knack for it
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Got it! - Oh it's huge! I mean not huge, but bigger.
- Bigger than the other ones we've seen, certainly.
Trouble is they're quite jumpy, prawns. - Yeah.
So, oh, amazing, you can see all the different legs
So they'll have about 10 to 14 pairs of legs
each one specialized for a different thing. - Whaat?
Some of them are strictly speaking legs, some of them are like things that used
to be legs that are now something different so the front you've got the... - Wait.
The things that used to be legs? - Yeah. - Are now something different? - Yeah.
So imagine you start off with 14... - Sure - ... pairs, so 28
- As you do. - As you do.
But you think, "Actually, I don't need that many to walk. I could quite do with something to
waft oxygen over my eggs so that they grow better". - Right!
- so you develop those.
So that is a close relative of the barnacle. - Ahh! - I know they look nothing like each other
- No! - But imagine that stuck on its back and then some of those legs I was talking about
get loads of feathery bits on them and they waft out of the barnacle to
catch, filter-feed. - So quick question - Yeah
- Is a barnacle also tasty?
- Probably, but not worth the effort - No.
Wow that is coming! - It's coming! - Coming in fast!
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Yeah I think we had a good haul. What was your favourite?
Finding that big prawn - Yes, the massive prawn!
Uh, the porcelain crab. - Porcelain crab, I think that was my favourite too!
Great, well thank you so much for joining me. I hope you had fun. - Thanks for taking us.
Yeah it was great fun. - Yeah and now as a non science person you can go out and learn more about nature
Well yeah, now we actually know more about rock pooling we should... - And they are on your doorstep - They are!
...stick a finger in it sometimes - Yeah just get your hands mucky. - Yes.
Cool so thank you for joining and see you for another one!
Can we keep the nets? - Yeah! - Cool!