Strange stranding on Reserve\'s beaches

This week has seen an odd phenonemon on the shores of the Marine Reserve. Literally millions of small, shrimp-like creatures called amphipods, have been washed up on the tideline.

Now there is what is called a plankton bloom every spring (and autumn), they are incredibly important and the basis of all life in the sea, but they don't usually happen on this scale. What happens each spring, is the sea warms up and there are more hours of sunlight. This is ideal conditions for tiny free floating plants (phytoplankton) to thrive and reproduce until there are so many of them that they turn the sea cloudy. These are then grazed on by similarly tiny animals (zooplankton) which again reproduce so that there are large numbers of them. These, in turn, are fed on by larger creatures like fish, birds and even really big wildlife like basking sharks and whales.

For some reason this year there has been an enormous bloom of phytoplankton, so big it can be seen from space, and so there has been this extraordinary bloom of amphipods feeding on the phytoplankton. As this photo shows, many of them have been washed up on beaches as a "white tide".

It is happeneing along the length of the east coast of Scotland and northern England, and is truely puzzling scientists as to why it has occurred. There is nothing to be worried about. There is no threat to human health, and who knows, we may just see some really interesting wildlife coming into feast!