|
On December 16th 2006 the British Divers
Marine Life Rescue team removed the carcass of a large Common
Dolphin from Gwithian Beach. This was the remains of a very old
male with a deformity of the melon part of the head which was
probably present at birth and the old male had many scars on its
body, obvious marks caused by monofilament nets, and tooth marks
from other dolphins, as well as many other curious marks. The
most interesting being a healed circular mark which looked as
though it had once been bitten by a Cookie Cutter Shark. The
Cookie Cutter is a small shark, about a metre long, that darts
in, clamps onto its victims body with its sucker like mouth and
huge razor sharp teeth, they than rotate and twist off a plug of
flesh, just like a cookie cutter being used to cut out a disk of
pastry, hence the name Cookie Cutter Shark. These sharks have
not confined their attacks to animate objects, for
rubber-covered sonar domes of U.S. submarines have also been
targeted.
If you find Goose Barnacles washed up onto a
beach attached to stranded logs plastic bottles, or other
objects, it might be worth
having a closer look, for you
 may fine nestling among them a
rare visitor to our shores. Recently a Columbus Crab
Planes minutus
was found on the beach at Bournemourh Within
days 3 more were found among Goose Barnacles on a polystyrene
float on the beach at Upton Towans, and at Perranporth, 6 were
found on a plastic barrel and one on a plastic float. This
little crab usually lives in the Sargasso Sea in the Bermuda
Triangle, where it lives among floating objects and they are
sometimes, but rarely, brought across the Atlantic by the Gulf
Stream still nestling among the floating objects. The creature,
also known as the Gulf-weed Crab, has a limited swimming ability
and rarely strays far from its drifting base.
Also found during December at Sennen, were two
species of
 Violet Sea Snails,
Janthia janthia
and
J. pallida,
these also drift on their self made bubble nests
and are often stranded with their
main prey
Velella velella.
When a finder picked some up at Woolacombe beach
he was “Inked “ with a violet dye.
A very small Kemp’s Ridley Turtle was found
stranded alive on the high tide line at Woolacombe beach, North
Devon. Two BDMLR medics were surfing there at the time, and
their attention was drawn to the stranded turtle. They arranged
to meet a representative of West Hatch RSPCA wildlife hospital
who had agreed to give it temporary accommodation and treatment.
A couple of days later it was transferred to the Weymouth Sea
Life Centre’s Turtle Rehabilitation Centre where they have more
experience with turtles and the facilities to deal with it. The
centre was very surprised to receive such a small turtle, which
was only about 35 cm long. The female turtle was very
hypothermic on arrival, with a bleak outlook, but after raising
its temperature and initiating feeding, it began to recover
well. The staff are now hopeful of releasing it back into the
sea off The Canaries in late April.
Bottlenose Dolphins came around Land’s End
into Mounts Bay on 1st January and were seen off Marazion on the
2nd and off The Greeb on the 3rd. Six dolphins, probably the
Bottlenose were seen off St Ives on the 19th and a single
dolphin off Sennen on the 31st.
Seven reports of Harbour Porpoises were
around West Penwith from the Minack to The Brisons in pod sizes
ranging from 1 to 6. One other sighting was of 10 off
Porthcothan. Three Fin Whales were seen off Porthgwarra on the
20th and the 21st and spouting whales, probably the Fin Whales
were seen heading north off Lands’s End at 1600 hrs on the 21st.
Violet Sea Snail were found at Gwithian and Perranporth and
Goose Barnacles with Columbus Crabs at Sennen and Watergate. |
