It was a very low tide yesterday when we took our horses to the beach. We could access both cave areas via the front by walking on a small sandy beach instead of only throught the tunnel.
This is the first time we have been able to do this.
It was in this section that is not usually open to walk through, that my little sister found these creatures.
Not sure what they are.
They have a hard, brittle, transparent verticle half-shield on top. This half-shield has a raised crosshatch type of pattern. The underneath is some sort of limpet type creature but with a very blue jelly like substance including tentacles ?? Dont know if that describes it.
There were about 15-20 of them, but only in that area, on top of the sand. The tide only revealed that area for a very short time so it was not possible to do a full investigation and we had the horses with us.
Thanks to Jessica at http://natureinfocus.wordpress.com/ who correctly identified these amazing sea creatures as:
ReplyDeleteBy-the-wind sailor or Velella
There is a lot of info on them if you search under that name on google.com and look at the images. Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velella gives you the basics.