A woman in Donegal was recently stung by a weever fish. It happens occasionally in the summer when people are paddling in shallow water off sandy beaches. Weever fish lie hidden in the sand, often between tide marks, with just their head and black, spiny dorsal fin exposed, which, if stepped […]
The illegal wildlife trade is the second biggest international crime after drug smuggling, but one hears about it less often. Personally, I think that wildlife smugglers should be punished far more harshly than drug dealers – after all, if someone wants to inject himself with heroin or addle his brain […]
Some English animal names don’t precisely define any one particular creature: prawn is a good example. According to my old seashore guide book, Palaemon serratus is the common prawn. In Ireland, however, fishermen call this a shrimp, and prawn to them is Nephrops norvegicus. But Nephrops, the Dublin Bay prawn, […]
I was recently shown a photograph of something from a local beach that I hadn’t noticed before. It resembled a giant honeycomb growing over a mussel-covered rock. The thing was a colony of Sabellaria alveolata, the honeycomb worm. The individual worms are only about four centimetres long, but each builds a […]
