Seashore Safaris By Judith Oakley
Seashore Safaris By Judith Oakley
Graffeg, £11.99
If you have trouble distinguishing your anemone from your egg wrack, this is the book for you. Judith Oakley is a widely experienced marine biologist and photographer specialising in intra-tidal regions – sand, rocks and rock pools between low and high water to you and me.
“My main endeavour is to bring the shore to you by means of stunning images, to entice you to rekindle those childhood rockpooling and beachcombing memories, and to help you to
rediscover a sense of amazement and awe for the wealth of wildlife on the beaches close to you.”
Last month PJ Vanston went a guided safari with Judith at Bracelet Bay, but if you cannot make it to one of these expeditions then taking this book along with you to the seaside is a good alternative. Judith has limited the species she describes to those she has actually encountered and photographed, many of them on Gower, so you have a fighting chance. I set off with book in hand and identified gutweed, a common shore crab, and a rough periwinkle in the first few minutes, where before I would have seen nothing but a bit of seaweed, an anonymous crab, and a shell with a foot.
The book is clearly laid out with chapters on the environment and where to seek shoreline wildlife, how to set about finding it, and a series of very clear illustrated sections on various categories of life from sponges to lobsters. It is easy to make an initial decision on where a find fits, then leaf through the illustrations to find out just what it is.
In his foreword, Iolo Williams asks if he has porcelain crabs on his local beach? If he finds a small hairy crab with broad flat claws and a habit of losing its legs, he is in luck.
