Category: Marine Life - Mediterranean Pyrenees

Fish Identification

20/9/2017

By Robin Noble (Photos by Martine Howard)

Through the last four years, we have seen a lot more fish, and Martine has become more skilful in photographing them. We think, therefore, that the time has come to provide a simple, photographic blog, listing and illustrating the fish that we see regularly, and a few rarer ones. The quality of the illustrations does, inevitably, vary somewhat, but we hope that the result will be useful. (Some of these fish vary quite a lot in colour and patterning, and the two reference sources we use do differ quite markedly at times, so we cannot guarantee 100% accuracy. Click on photos to enlarge image.)

Bream Family:
Saddled Sea Bream
White Sea Bream
Two-banded Sea Bream
Sharpsnout Sea Bream
Zebra Sea Bream
Gilt-head Sea Bream

Mullet Family:
Red Mullet
Thicklip Grey Mullet
Salema
Damselfish

Blenny Family:
Tampot Blenny
Parablennius incognitus (apparently no English name)
Parablennius sanguinolentus (ditto)

Goby Family:
Sarato’s Goby
Buchich’s Goby
Golden Goby

Wrasse Family:
Rainbow Wrasse (male illustrated here)
Rainbow Wrasse (female illustrated here)
Peacock Wrasse

Painted Comber
Big-scale Sand Smelt

In addition to these, Martine has also definitely seen Ornate Wrasse, Grouper and Barracuda, but the photos are not good enough to reproduce. (And we have, of course, also seen a few octopuses as reported in recent blogs.) There are, doubtless, other species to find, but the above list, allied with the sheer numbers seen, does at least make clear the richness of the close waters of the Mediterranean.

Changing Shapes Under the Sea

3/9/2017

By Robin Noble (Photos by Martine Howard)

Our “Côte Rocheuse” has long stretches of high cliff, broken by deep bays, where many of the attractive coastal towns like Port Vendres and Collioure are situated. There are much smaller bays as well, some under the high expanses of rock, others within the larger inlets. Particularly if it is breezy, we spend a lot of time swimming around in these little, often idyllic places, and as they are fairly shallow, have come to notice the often subtle differences in the seabed.

Recently we were in exactly such a place; it is not at all deep, and provided with one or two large rocks, so few boats actually anchor there, and the seabed is relatively unscathed. Some of it is almost sandy, there are areas of small stones, and where the coastal rocks slide down into the sea, there are narrow cracks and small chasms, relatively deep and dark. Most of it is quite well “vegetated”, with large areas of low, gungy algae, and several of the white, whorled, flower-like things, which are called “peacock’s tail”. (I say “things” because I am not totally sure whether they count as plants or not!)

It was very sheltered and calm, and I was able simply to relax, enjoy my swimming, and have a good look at what was going on under the surface of the gently moving sea. There were quite a few little fish scooting around, often babies of the friendly saddled bream, which like to hang around under the hull of our boat. But, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a few, different fish, nosing between the stones; they were wrasse (I think of at least two kinds, certainly there were rainbow wrasse of both sexes), and they seemed to be concentrating on something, almost, one would say, harassing it. For a moment, I thought little of it, but then the “something” moved, and so I swam over to have a better look.

It was a small octopus, about, we think, some six inches across when its tentacles were curled into its body. It obligingly moved around a bit, and I called Martine to have a look at it; two of her photographs appear below. As it moved about, it changed colour, from a greenish-brown, fringed with palest green-to-white, to a darker speckled brown.

When we were on holiday in the Maldives, in February, we were lucky enough to observe – from a pier, looking into very clear, shallow water – a much larger octopus, which obligingly shifted around the seabed, for several minutes, in full view. Its motion could best be described as “flowing”, which it did for a few feet at a time, before pausing, almost “collecting itself”, the tentacles coming into the body, resting for a short while, then moving on. As it manoeuvred in this fashion, it changed colour too; this one went light blue round the edges as it halted. At times, our little local one was the colour of the seabed, which made following it more difficult.

Reading up about these strange creatures, we have learnt that they are considered very intelligent; there is a story that captive octopuses (the more correct plural, as the word is not Latin), have been known to leave their own tanks at night, climb into adjacent ones full of fish, eat the fish, and return to their own tank before morning. It is hard not to ascribe very human qualities to a creature capable of working out and performing this, but we should, I guess, be very careful before doing so: their brains and nervous systems are hugely different from ours. Wikipedia says that two thirds of their “neurons are to be found in the nerve cords of their arms, which show a variety of complex reflex actions which persist even when they have no input from the brain”.

Strange, too, is the fact that most octopuses only live for a period of up to five years; effectively, they breed once, and then die. This seems an extraordinary waste of all that brainpower and complex ability. We have seen a significantly larger octopus in the very same bay, so perhaps it offers ideal nursery conditions for the young.

Click on photos for larger image.

Short Marine Blog

9/7/2017

By Robin Noble

When we are out at sea, exploring our amazing coast, we are always conscious of the endless eastern horizon, that great expanse of ocean; (yes, I know the Mediterranean is just a “sea”, but it is, in fact, enormous, and gives me the same feeling as looking across the Atlantic from Orkney used to do!). We do get to peek under that endless surface, when we are snorkelling around the coastal rocks, but once further out, it is hard to get any real sense of what goes on, under or over the water, as we constantly look eastwards, and generally, see nothing.

But, sometimes, it is different. One day recently, we watched a trawler coming into Port Vendres: they had obviously had a catch, and were gutting the fish. The boat was followed by a great crowd of gulls, but there were other birds, too, which must have been lured from much further out than we normally venture, as we very rarely, or never, see them. There were several young gannets, in various shades from dark blue-grey to blotchy white, but there were also birds belonging to a family which we immediately recognised from our (Scottish) West Coast background. These were, clearly, shearwaters, wonderful birds, which wander the oceans of the Earth, only coming ashore to breed. We had once before seen members of this family here: the Greater Shearwater, large and handsome, but these birds were smaller, plainer, if equally brownish in contrast to the blue-black of the Manx with which we are so familiar. They have to be Balearic Shearwaters, which breed on the islands of the same name, but wander the Mediterranean from Greece westwards, and even may be seen at times around the British Coast and in the North Sea. This we discovered once home; on this day we were just happy to watch their characteristic looping flight, as they described figures-of-eight around the trawler.

And yesterday we were enjoying the slightly turbulent water around Cap Béar. Here we briefly saw another of the shearwaters, and then, ahead of us, a rather wobbly, tall fin. Intrigued, we hastened towards it, and for a quick moment, had a good view of one of the strangest creatures of the sea. It was a sunfish. These, to be honest, look to me like one of Nature’s jokes, as it seems simply like the front half of a fish, which has unfortunately lost its rear end. I would have to admit that in the water it did not look quite as weird as in some of the photos you see. We did not have long to admire it, no time to get the cameras out, as it was obviously aware of the presence of the boat, and submerged quite quickly. It seems they can grow to great size – some being over three metres in length – but ours was probably about one metre. Its diet apparently consists of jellyfish, of which as a swimmer who does not wear a wetsuit, I can only approve!

A Boating Retrospect: Summer 2016

14/10/2016

by Robin Noble (photos by Martine Howard)

Well, October is here, the weather has changed somewhat (in fact we have just experienced a major coastal storm), and the sea is noticeably cooler although the sun is still very warm some days. Our "good ship" Puffin sits quietly in our garage, and boating is over for another year. But there are still all those photographs to sort through, to enjoy, and memories to savour.

During the course of this season we have very much got into some sort of routine during these boating days out from Banyuls: we are usually on the water before eleven, heading out to the moorings on the Marine Reserve, and hoping for a good one. We will have a quick cup of coffee onboard, and then swim until a latish lunch. Martine goes further than I do, and takes the camera, but we are both in the water for at least an hour and a half at this time of day, swimming around all the time, searching for fish.

The reason for emphasising this routine is to make it clear that any comparison we make between the early season in June, and the later in September, and between years, has some validity – and we have been very struck this year by the very noticeable differences. In September, there were simply more fish than we had ever seen before.

They divided roughly into four groups. The first, because they are small and delicate, with conspicuously forked tails, are the damselfish; there were clouds of them at times.

Then the salema, in close-packed shoals, working over the weeds and general gunge on the sea-floor. They are really beautiful, a pale blueish colour with delicate yellow horizontal stripes, and a dot of black and yellow at the base of the fins.

The next group is composed of the various breams, the most immediately obvious of which are the saddled bream, which tend to enjoy the shadow of the hull and hang around below the boat. I think of them as friendly and inquisitive; when I put my head under water for the first time, I will often find that I have one on each side, perhaps only a couple of feet away, and you can attract them closer.

But there are many other bream including the gilt-head, the annular, the striped and two banded seabream and we have seen them in big groups often hanging motionless in the water beside a steep rock-face, stacked like planes at Heathrow but infinitely more numerous. Then there are the smaller ones which work over the seabed like the salema but more often singly – the wrasse and the various gobies.

There are other fish, of course, too but the above are what we have seen in considerable numbers this September. Martine's photographs and the video below give a good impression of the richness of this Marine Reserve, and may explain the fascination of this coast for us.

But all this piscatorial richness raises, not for the first time, the rather obvious ecological question: where are the avian predators? There are a few cormorants about, but pretty few, and no more than in previous years. The shearwaters and the occasional gannet mentioned in previous blogs were obviously occasional visitors, and otherwise we have seen only a couple of young sandwich terns, which could dive for fish, and some gulls which can only take things close to the surface. One day a yellow-legged gull came close to us and we watched it for quite a while; it made no effort to look for food under the water and was presumably hoping for scraps from the boats.

Yellow legged gull

We have never had the gulls around us while we have been anchored on the Reserve, nor do they even hang around the small boats out there, which are obviously fishing. There really does seem to be what you might term an "ecological gap" here, a rich and growing marine resource, which appears free from predation from the air...

Can't wait till next year to see how the situation may develop!

Black Spikes, Red Prowlers and Undersea Gardens

13/7/2016

by Robin Noble Photos by Robin Noble and Martine Howard

As I have reported before, we spend many of these hotter, humid days at sea, normally heading down the coast into Spanish waters. The cliffs are truly dramatic, almost savage, but there are several tiny, almost invisible little bays with fine shingle beaches, and, on calm days, some lovely swimming.

Much of our time has been spent getting to know the many fish on the Marine Reserve out of Banyuls, but there are other things of interest, too.

I must confess we have spent little time on the various brown seaweeds at the foot of the cliffs, and the all-too-many black and spiny sea-urchins really worry me, but, in brilliant contrast, Martine has recently photographed some bright red starfish, on the move across the seabed. The one illustrated here seems to have got into some sort of yoga position, but is certainly a rather handsome specimen.

While I was recently splashing around in one of our favourite little coves (which is backed by some magnificent rocks) I did observe that along the sea's edge on some of the more sheltered rocks, there some big, red beadlet sea anemones, roughly similar to those familiar from British coasts but somewhat larger. And, later, I noticed that some largish, flatter rocks, three or more feet under the surface, were pale, a sort of sandy-white in colour. The water is nearly always wonderfully clear, and I headed back to the boat to get my goggles, put my head under and get a proper view of whatever was causing this coloration. And having done that, I had to return to the boat for the little underwater camera in order to photograph it!

I hope the result is clear enough to give a good impression of this delicate, miniature, undersea garden which I saw there, and which I found quite entrancing. On close inspection it looks like a dense collection of tiny, delicate, white parasols and, according to the invaluable book "Marine Wildlife of the Mediterranean" (which we have mentioned before), it is a seaweed which goes by the poetic name of "mermaid's wine-glass"; the latin is less interesting perhaps- acetabularia acetabulum! The book says that it can be greenish, but what I saw was really all white, as was another seaweed around the place, again quite small, but delicate and this time "whorled" (does the word exist?) like a shell: the "peacocks's tail", padina pavonica. This I have seen growing larger and more abundantly around some Greek Isles, and it is great to be reminded of all the wonderful places within the compass of this Mediterranean Sea. We are so lucky!

End-of-Season Blog

2/10/2015

by Robin Noble

Well, the first snows are high on Canigou, the weather is fresher, and for us the boating season is firmly over. It has been more mixed than usual this year, weather-wise, with a lot of wind and sometimes an impressive swell to cope with. Despite that, we have had some lovely days, and ventured a little bit further along the coast, both to the north and south.

The last few days at sea gave us some nice moments, and some interesting sightings; as ever, there were gulls and cormorants, as well as a few immature terns. Once again, we concluded that these were sandwich terns, despite the fact that they look rather chunkier than most books suggest. Strange that we never seem to see the adults. With them, we again once saw an immature gannet; even in the distance, its magnificent dives made it obvious. But as we have slowly increased our awareness of the richness of the life in this sea, we remain puzzled at the lack of seabirds – there are plenty of fish for them to feed on!

What we did see, at last, were dolphins; not the fabulous, breaching-all-around-the-boat vision of my dreams, but good, repeated views of two dolphins nonetheless. They did not leap high out of the shining sea, but we could see little variation in the dark grey of their bodies, and that, allied to their size, relatively restrained behaviour, and the fact that there were only two of them, convinced us that they were common bottle-nosed dolphins, a nice sighting with which to end the season.

But Martine also added to our list of things seen underwater; this was a strange creature, which we visited twice. It was a common sea cucumber, new to us, weird and spiky. According to the invaluable "Marine Wildlife of the Mediterranean", they are found "on shallow bottoms, covered in sand and seagrass, rich in organic matter. Spawns at dusk (which this was not), during summer, when it is easily spotted in a vertical position releasing eggs or sperm".

I shall only say that on our second visit, it had clearly performed this vital task, and had returned to its normal, probably rather unexciting, life.

And on land, one wonderful, end-of -season view: I was working inside one dull grey day when I heard, repeatedly, the familiar call of the bee-eater – lots of them. I grabbed the binoculars and ran outside to discover that on this one occasion, the birds were all around the house, flying low, sometimes even below me, landing briefly on trees and bushes in nearby gardens. In the dull conditions, not for once blinded by the sun, I could see their glorious colouring, and admire their excited flight around me, even seeing them catch and carry bees (presumably!) in their bills. Simply wonderful!

Cool, Wet Blog

15/7/2015

by Robin Noble & Photos by Martine Howard

After a late and turbulent spring, we seem to have progressed very quickly to a heatwave – or at least to what we, with less than three years' experience, certainly regard as a heatwave! It does not do the garden much good; seeds and plants, which were lovingly tended through the vagaries of the spring weather, now wilt, crisp and fry – and the gardener does much the same!

The obvious solution, as I have mentioned before, is to take to the Mediterranean, and spend days both on it, and, refreshingly, in it. We have launched both at Argelès and Banyuls, and from those two centres covered quite a stretch of coast. This activity has reinforced our feeling of last year, which was that the stretch of coastline known as the Côte Vermeille, is truly one of the great glories of the Pyrénées Orientales, but really only appreciable from the water. We have ventured further south into Spanish waters this year, discovering perhaps the finest bay yet – the Platja de Garbet, south of the worryingly-named town of Colera, (where I see there is a Platja dels Morts).

On the way down there we stopped, as last year, under one of the high, black cliffs on either side of Port Bou, and marvelled again at the flight of the rock- and cave-nesting swifts as they fly out into the sun and over the water. It is a wonderful experience to be swimming in the silken waters, with screaming swifts hurtling above you. While relaxing later in the bobbing boat, staring up at the vertical cliffs, which must be at least two hundred feet high, I tried to watch individual birds carefully and estimate their wingspan, an almost impossible task as they hurtle overhead. The point was that I was convinced that I had seen white on some of the birds, which must mean that they were alpine swifts, with a wingspan of some 21 inches according to my book. Common swifts there certainly were in numbers, too, making a very fine spectacle.

Elsewhere, with a lower, more vegetated and less rocky shore, I was able to watch and contrast the more fluttery flight of sand martins as they patrolled the crest of the escarpment in search of insects. Several times this year I have confirmed my feeling that all these hirundines choose to nest in busy places, where there is lots of life around, including lots of traffic, which they do not appear to mind. This has been confirmed in Perpignan, Sorède, St. Nazaire and the main street of our own village of Le Pont (Reynes), where the calls and flight of swifts, swallows and house martins entertain you as you wait for a bus. By contrast, in our normally quiet suburb, (where it seems to me, the houses still offer adequate ledges for nesting) few birds are actually resident although plenty may be seen high overhead on a calm evening. Perhaps they do feel some real affinity with old centres of population and human activity?

We have been in the water a great deal, with Martine, of course, properly under it, me pottering along gently on the surface. The great sighting this year has been our first octopus; Martine in fact saw two, on different days, but I actually managed to view the second which was a great thrill. He (Martine promptly christened it "Oscar" so it has to be "he " – sad, I know!), was very well camouflaged, and aware of our presence but in no way suggested real alarm, just moving gently away. They have a strange, amorphous, flowing motion, visibly changing shape as they glide over and around the rocks, a characteristic which may be intended to confuse a predator.

Oscar

Other sightings have been of fish, and we continue to be impressed by the richness of these clear waters. Martine has again been engaged in attempting underwater photography – something of a hit or miss, as it is impossible, while swimming, to see through the viewfinder. Some have, despite this, come out rather well, and a few new ones have been placed in her gallery of photos, while others accompany this text (thanks, as ever, Lesley!). We have seen, as last year, lots of saddled seabream, white and annular bream, as well as the pretty salema, (all of which are pictured here). The two peacock wrasses, the five-spotted and rainbow wrasses, painted comber, and the blue damselfish, also seen and listed by Martine, have so far eluded the camera. Lots of anchovies, too!

Saddled Sea Bream

White Bream

Salema and Bream

As for seabirds, as last year, we have only seen gulls and cormorants, apart from one hot, hazy, lazy afternoon as we made our way back to Argelès, when a young gannet, dark above and white below, followed the good ship Puffin, occasionally halting to make its vertical dive. As we know, there is plenty down there to feed it, and I remain very surprised at how few birds we have seen out on these enchanting waters.

More Sights at Sea & in the Garden

11/7/2014

by Robin Noble

We have been out on the sea several times now, from Argelès mainly, once from Banyuls, and one slightly more adventurous trip which is, strictly, not relevant to these blogs, as it was out of Cadaqués. These outings have confirmed what I had always thought must be the case from reading the map, and that is that we have an impressive and interesting coastline. The rock features may not include many arches, there are really no stacks and only a few caves, but the cliffs and headlands are wild and craggy, formed of metamorphic schist with "injected" and very contorted volcanic rock, and there are a number of tiny bays where you can haul a boat out, swim and have a picnic. Most of these features are hard to glimpse from the land, let alone the road, and you have to take to the water to see the best of it.

A considerable number of people explore the underwater richness of this coast from the many dive-boats, but there is also the "sentier sous-marin", a sort of underwater nature trail in a bay near Cerbère. Martine (my watery partner) reports that it seems popular and provides some quite interesting snorkelling, while not being as good as one of the stations out on the Marine Reserve. (me? I was just swimming in circles round the boat!). We reckon that on these trips (seven this month), we may have seen ten different species of fish close-to, but have not yet managed to identify them all, (including the two most attractive species, one horizontally striped, one with lovely blue fins, that swam around my feet in one of the nice swimming bays near Collioure!) We are now looking for a book which will help us identify these different fish. Other, bigger, fish are certainly about, but all we have really seen so far are substantial splashings ahead of the boat.

Back on land, in the garden, the exotic nature of our life here (easy to take for granted after a while), was confirmed by a splendid sighting of a hoopoe in the front garden; the intricate and dramatic patterning on its folded wings was wonderful to study closely. This "front garden", like every part of our small domain, does without the immaculate, constantly watered grass which some people achieve. Ours is rough and dry, and wildflowers are allowed to go to seed, which has brought the goldfinches in lately on a number of occasions. They may not be as exotic as the hoopoe, but they are very colourful and I love their tinkling call. And now we have greenfinches apparently building a nest in one of the tall cypresses (surely this is very late?). Sardinian warblers have been having constant hysterics in the hedges between us and our neighbours, to the extent that I wonder whether that red eye indicates a bird with high blood pressure. In some contrast, the marsh tit has been demurely slipping through the bushes, although occasionally it emerges, imitating a fly-catcher as it makes a rapid sortie into the open.

Now, reluctantly, we are both returning, (fairly briefly) to Scotland, where everything will, as ever, be totally different. Vive la différence!

Midsummer Blog (well almost!)

25/6/2014

by Robin Noble (photography by Martine Howard)

I am writing this on an extraordinary afternoon, with the thunder rolling endlessly around Vallespir. We have had several humid days, and they have been warm, too, warmer than at the same time last year, fairly hot, most people seem to agree, for around Midsummer. It will be interesting to see how July and August work out!

We recently made one visit back to the Etang: the flamingos were certainly still present in numbers, which must prove that they do breed there. Sadly, they were, as so often, on the far side and really out of range of my binoculars, so I have no idea whether they had young. Two black swans were still there, without cygnets, and we also saw a few of the wonderful great-crested grebes, a grey heron, and a few egrets. Most remarkable to us was a huge flock of coots, more than I had ever seen together anywhere, in the middle distance. Again, there was no chance to tell if they had young among their numbers. It all goes to reinforce our view that this Etang (and the many others in the Roussillon) form a very important part of the natural landscape which surrounds us. And on the way into the hide, I had a quick, but perfect view of the red-eyed Sardinian Warbler, of which I knew nothing at all before I saw Isobel’s lovely photo.

When we have felt it too hot and humid on land, we have taken to the sea, which has been delightful. Our wee boat ("Puffin"!), lives in our garage, and it takes little more than half an hour to tow her to the slipway at the Argelès basin. From there, chugging along at a pleasant, and ecologically friendly, speed, we reckon to reach Collioure in little over six minutes, Port Vendres in about another six, and to round the craggy rocks of Cap Béar in about 20 all told. This stretch of the coast is really best seen from the water, and although I still fail to see from where the description: "Cote Vermeille" really derives, it is a handsome piece of coastline, with splendidly contorted crags of metamorphic rock.

Recently, we ventured as far as the Marine Nature Reserve south of Banyuls. You are not meant to anchor casually in this clearly-demarcated stretch of water, but there is, at this time of year at least, adequate provision in the form of substantial buoys to which you can attach your boat. We were fortunate to arrive at a relatively quiet time, and managed to take possession of a buoy which was quite close in to the rocks, beneath a magnificent, jagged, overhanging cliff. When we arrived, the sea was quiet and inviting, not quite the ultimate "glassy calm", but silken-smooth.

I love being in the water, but want to stay firmly on the surface, whereas Martine, on the other hand, must actually really be part fish, and loves being under it, for as long as possible. So I swam around for a while, rejoicing in the clean coolness of the water, then returned to the boat, and watched the sea idly as I dried off in the sun. Looking over the side, the first thing to strike me here is always the clarity of the water, in itself a real achievement when you consider that there is a significant human population on this stretch of coast. A few fish were obviously enjoying the shade cast by the boat: they were a medium grey, tinged with a slight yellow when in the sunlight, with a pronounced black and white patch back by the tail. Their young, paler but with the black and white equally pronounced, had been swimming inquisitively around my legs a few days before, when I stood in a lovely small bay just around Cap Béar. Reference to a colour chart we had recently bought made us decide that these are probably the Saddled Seabream (oblada melanura).

Martine, meanwhile, had been snorkelling around the rocks, and had been having a wonderful time. She had been trying out a small underwater camera, and playing games of hide-and-seek with (other!) fish around the rocks and in the weedy gullies, trying to take pictures of them. She said it was quite difficult, as she was trying to look through her mask, through a tiny viewfinder, at little fish that were scooting about! Only later, on the computer, could we really assess the results, and a few of them follow this blog, along with attempted identification where we are sure of it. All told, that day we had a wonderful time at sea, but more importantly it is clear that there is, out there, an underwater landscape of some richness, and - most important of all - it is being well looked after.

Creatures of the Deep - Pyrenees Marine Reserve - Banyuls

Lesley McLaren, Bruce Hyde, Isobel Mackintosh, Robin Noble, Martine Howard, mediterraneanpyrenees.com associates and affiliates do not warrant or assume any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any information, product or process disclosed. Lesley McLaren, Bruce Hyde, Isobel Mackintosh, Robin Noble, Martine Howard, mediterraneanpyrenees.com and affiliates do not endorse or recommend any commercial products, processes or services and cannot be held liable for any result of the use of such information, products, processes or services discussed on this website.

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