Marine Biodiversity Data Portal - NI
Carrickfergus, Belfast Lough.
Survey number: 555 Event number: 19860903/21 Date: 1986-09-03 GPS: 54.72083,-5.78500. Depth: 3.5 to 0.2 m. [ View map ]
Site Description: The transect lies at the foot of a high sea wall. It consists of a narrow, relatively steeply shelving upper shore composed of coarse and medium sand, gravel, pebbles and boulders and a flat extensive lower shore consisting of a layer of fine sand on top of an underlying clay layer 15-25 cm down. Perhaps because of the clay layer, there are very few Arenicola casts, but a large number of empty piddock shells on the surface. There are scattered small boulders on the surface of the flat lower shore. The most obvious infauna were Cerastoderma edule and Nephtys sp. below level 5, the clay layer broke through the sand surface, forming crumpling areas of soft mudstone, and soft mudstone stones on the sand surface. These were colonised by communities of ephemeral algae (e.g. Ulva, Ulva linza (originally recorded as Enteromorpha linza), Bryopsis, Asperococcus sp.) while other large boulders also found on or below low tide level supported communities of more long lived species (Fucus serratus, Mastocarpus, Cladostephus).
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Species list (27 species recorded)
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