Adventures at Cable Bay, April 2023
We braved the wild wind and had a wonderful rock pool adventure at Cable Bay. It was lots of fun exploring and learning together. With the wind making ripples on the pools, we were thankful for the underwater viewers to see the bottom of the pools and find some creatures. We saw cushion stars of different colours, hermit crabs, purple rock crabs, chiton, cats eye snails, a camouflaged cockabully, a mottled brittle star, kina, Neptune’s necklace, moulted crab shells and a crayfish shell. We also saw a patch of rocks with A LOT of bird poo and thought it must be where the sea birds rest.
We had a few questions while we were there and I have found some answers:
- Do crabs grow their legs back?- yes but they will only grow back after they moult (discard their old shell and grow their bigger shell).
- How do sea stars eat?- they push their stomach out of their mouth and onto their food (small animals like barnacles) then digest it.
- What eats kina?- we knew fish and people did, but sea stars also eat them! Kina eat seaweed such as kelp.
- Reference: Ned Barraud & Gillian Chandler: “At the beach; explore and discover the New Zealand seashore”.
If you are interested in the food web of the rock pool, you could make a food web with the creatures we found, there is a template at the back of the following colouring book:
https://www.otago.ac.nz/marine-studies/resources/download/otago062864.pdf
