One of the joys of a good beach is wandering along its tideline looking for interesting things that have been washed up. The beaches to the north and south of Golspie aren't great for this as they tend to have very little for the beachcomber outside a fairly limited range of common casualties: jellyfish - though we've had few of those this summer - mussel and cockle shells,
Arctica, otter and razor shells are examples. However, every now and then we find something which....
....even some time searching on the internet fails to identify. This object - ladies' size 7 boot for scale - looked at first glance to be a starfish, but there are plenty of its features which make that identification unlikely. On finding it we concluded that it must either be something common which has been chewed up by something else - for example, kelp with its brown 'skin' removed - or something rather unusual - but then, a couple of hundred metres further along the beach, we found another, almost identical specimen. Can anyone help me here?
Is it hard, soft, gelatinous? Is it hollow in the core? Does the 'head' look like it was attached to something leaving a scar? Is it vessecular? Does it have a beak at the centre?
ReplyDeleteCould it be the basal mass of a squid egg mop?
Thanks for responding to my 'appeal', Derryck. I'll have to go back and find another one and look at it much more closely to answer all your questions. No problem - it gives me an excuse to go back to Littleferry!
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