Ranger Round-Up 2026: Week 6

Welcome to the new weekly ranger round-up, where our Summer Marine Rangers Emma and Charley as well as our Gull Ranger, Patrick, will come together to share everything they have been up to! Enjoy reading through these weekly summaries and please pop into Blue Adventures if you want to say hi to the team.

Rockpool Rambles: St Abbs, Killiedraught and Coldingham

This week was absolutely rammed with events for the general public, including three rockpool rambles spanning across Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Although the weather was against us, Emma managed to make it out onto the rocks with families to show them the variety of marine life which can be found in the tidepools. St Abbs had a noticeable number of beadlet anemones on the rocks, and a diving strap was discovered too amongst the oar weed which had been dredged up by the waves.

Meanwhile, Killiedraught provided a more diverse habitat, as Emma identified some brittle starfish, porcelain crabs and a butterfish too. Butterfish can be found on rocky shores across the UK, appearing yellow, orange or brown, with distinctive black dots along their backs. They are small eel-like fish that are normally hidden under rocks or in crevices along the shore. They are incredibly difficult to catch due to their slimy, slippery skin!

Finally, the Coldingham Bay rockpool ramble was by far the busiest event! Families joined from every direction, intrigued by the rockpool kit - so much so, Emma needed to call Charley in for back-up. It was an incredibly successful event, which allowed children to witness shore crabs scuttling under rocks and hiding in sand to avoid predation. There were plenty of perwinkles, barnacles and limpets for families to identify, as usual, with families fascinated by the tentacles on the beadlet anemones. Beadlet anemones have blue beads under their tentacles, which host nematocysts - stinging cells. Although human skin is too thick for the stinging cells to penetrate, we always recommend you do not touch the anemones or remove them from their rocks!

Coastal Clean Up: Pease Bay

While Emma was busy rambling around the rockpools, Charley led the coastal clean-up at Pease Bay on Wednesday. Pease Bay is one of our most Northern sites in the Berwickshire Marine Reserve, and it’s also one of the most visually striking, with its dramatic red and golden sandstone cliffs. 

The clean-up started as usual, sweeping along the high-tide line and collecting the typical mix of plastics, rope and stray beach items. But, Pease Bay had a couple of surprises awaiting us. We came across a very unusual, and awful amount of underpants… Far more than any beach should reasonably contain, but we had an awesome vibe going between Charley and all the volunteers, giggling and laughing at all the stray underpants we found along the way! Then came the exciting surprise - one of our volunteers found an old message in a jar, it looked like it had been there for some time too! Finding it felt like stumbling across a secret note from another coastline in a different century! Pease Bay definitely kept us very well entertained during this coastal clean up!

As always, every piece of material we removed from the beach was recorded in our survey for the Marine Conservation Society (MCS). These surveys help MCS map the spatial distribution of litter around the UK and track the long term trends in litter types and sources, providing vital evidence for national conservation and policy work. 

A memorable clean-up, a beautiful stretch of coastline, and a reminder of why these sessions matter!

Great Global Nurdle Hunt With Sea The Change: Coldingham Bay

Unfortunately, a cargo ship carrying containers filled with nurdles collided with a crane near Newcastle upon Tyne late last week, releasing huge quantities of these plastic pellets into the sea. In response, Sea The Change put out an urgent call for help along the East Coast to remove as many nurdles as possible before they spread further.

Nurdles are tiny plastic pellets, about the size of a lentil, and they’re the raw material used to make almost all plastic products. They’re melted down and moulded into whatever plastic item is being manufactured. Knowing that thousands of these pellets are now polluting our coastline and marine environment is truly heartbreaking.

We were very hopeful that the Nurdles hadn't made their way up the coast to Coldingham Bay, but unfortunately we found about 300 nurdles along the sand dunes on the left hand side of the bay… Once we started finding the nurdles, it was so addictive and we found it really hard to pull ourselves away from the hunt and back to reality. It was high levels of satisfaction after retrieving all of them from the bay!

Lobster release with Forth Marine Hatchery and Conservation Talks 

We had the pleasure of collaborating with Forth Marine Hatchery - a conservation and aquaculture facility dedicated to restoring not only European lobsters but now European flat oysters too. They receive female lobsters that are carrying hundreds of eggs from local fishers - also known as ‘berried’ lobsters. Legally, these lobsters cannot be caught or sold by fishers, but either released into the sea after being v-notched (clipped) on the tail, or passed onto Forth Marine Hatchery. Here, they rear hundreds of eggs to increase the chances of the juveniles surviving in the wild. This process helps recover heavily fished stocks as well as sustaining a species which is ecologically and economically important to East Lothian’s local community. 

Once juvenile lobsters reach stage 4 of their life cycle, they are ready for release into the big wide world. In this case, 400 juvenile lobsters were ready and we had the honour of releasing them into the wild at Eyemouth Beach on the rocky shore. It was such a surreal experience for many of us, having never seen such small lobsters before! Around 20 people came along to the shore, releasing tubes of juveniles into rockpools at low tide, so when the tide comes in they are free to roam the sea. After releasing the juvenile lobsters, we returned to the MEC to discuss the Forth Marine Hatchery and what they get up to there. Moreover, Emma and Charley provided a talk on the BMR. It was lovely meeting people who had travelled all the way from Edinburgh for this event - thank you Forth Marine Hatchery for this wonderful opportunity!

Seaweed search: Eyemouth Beach

Charley ended the busy week with a Big Seaweed Search along Eyemouth Beach, taking full advantage of a gentle, golden afternoon that made the whole shoreline feel calm and inviting. The Big Seaweed Search is a citizen science project run by the Natural History Museum and Marine Conservation Society, where volunteers record a handful of key seaweed species to help track how our coasts are changing over time. 

We spent an hour exploring a section of the rocky shore, checking the rocks, pools and ledges for the species on our target list, and the bay delivered! We found plenty of seaweeds that the project focuses on, from familiar wracks to chunky kelps, all looking super healthy and abundant! Even better, we didn’t spot any invasive species, which is always a small victory for local biodiversity. 

The method is wonderfully straightforward. You look for specific groups - things like kelp species, note what you find and take a few photos. No collecting, no complicated kit, just careful observation and a chance to slow down and really look at the shoreline, appreciating all its beauty. It’s the kind of citizen science that feels meaningful without ever feeling heavy. 

We were also completely captivated by the beautiful red seaweeds scattered across the lower shore. Their colours were so striking in the afternoon light that we had to keep reminding ourselves to stay on track with the survey and not get too distracted by the reds. They really stole the show! 

It really was a lovely way to end the week - a peaceful session and another small but important contribution to the national picture of how our coastline is changing.