Responsible Rock Pooling with Children

Why Rock Pooling Is Worth Doing Properly

There are few better free days out in Britain than a morning spent peering into a rock pool. Children are natural explorers, and a shallow pool on a low tide is a whole world of crabs, anemones, blennies and winkles just waiting to be discovered. The trick is to make sure the pool is just as full of life when you leave as it was when you arrived.

Rock pooling has become more popular than ever, and some of our most-loved shorelines are feeling the pressure. The good news is that responsible rock pooling is not complicated. A few simple habits, taught early, turn a fun afternoon into a genuine lesson in looking after the coast.

Plan Your Trip Around the Tide

The single most useful thing you can do is check a tide table before you go. You want a low tide of around 0.5 metres or less to expose the best pools, and you want to arrive at the shore roughly an hour before low water so you have time to explore safely.

Spring tides, which happen around the full and new moon, give the biggest range and the most dramatic rock platforms. Neap tides are much less rewarding.

• Aim to be back up the beach at least an hour before the tide turns and starts to fill the gullies behind you.
• Never let children explore a rocky outcrop that could be cut off. Watch where the water would go if it rose quickly.
• Wear closed-toe shoes with grip. Wellies are fine for sand but treacherous on wet, weed-covered rock.
• Take a bucket with a little sea water in it, a plastic spoon, and a magnifying glass. That is genuinely all you need.

Keep Creatures in Water

This is the rule that matters most. Almost everything in a rock pool is adapted to being underwater, and most of it cannot survive long in the open air. A crab in a dry bucket is a crab in trouble.

If you want to look at something closely, use a small clear container filled with sea water from the same pool, and keep the animal submerged the whole time. Have a good look, let your child count the legs or watch the anemone's tentacles, then put it straight back where you found it. Ten minutes is a sensible maximum, and shorter is better on a hot day.

Avoid handling fish, which have a protective slime layer that our skin damages, and never pick up a crab by its claws or legs. If you must move one, support it from underneath. Sea anemones should not be poked into closing, as it costs them energy they need for feeding and defending themselves.

• Use one bucket, half full, and change the water regularly if it warms up.
• Keep the bucket in the shade, not in direct sun.
• Never tip a bucket of creatures onto the sand or into a different pool.
• Return everything before you leave, not on the way home.

Return Stones Exactly as You Found Them

Turning over a rock is the classic rock pooling move, and it is fine, as long as you turn it back. The underside of a stone is a sheltered home for sponges, worms, sea squirts and tiny brittle stars that need darkness and damp. Left exposed, they dry out or get eaten within minutes.

Lift stones gently rather than flipping them far, look underneath, then set them back the same way up, in the same spot, so the edges sit as they did. Encourage children to think of it as putting the roof back on somebody's house. If a stone is too big for a child to lift safely, it is too big to move at all.

The same goes for seaweed. Clumps of weed hold moisture and shelter dozens of small creatures at low tide. Drag it aside to look, then put it back roughly where it was rather than casting it up the beach.

Leave Shells and Seaweed for the Next Tide

It is tempting to pocket a pretty shell or a piece of mermaid's purse, but empty shells are not always empty. They are potential homes for hermit crabs, and they break down into the sand that holds the whole beach together. Seaweed, too, is part of the system: it feeds the strandline, which in turn feeds sand hoppers and the birds that visit them.

Take photographs instead. A shell photographed against a wet rock, with a small hand in the frame, makes a far better keepsake than a crumbling shell on a windowsill. If you do want a memento, collect a piece of sea glass or a single pebble from above the high water mark, where nothing is living on it.

• No live shells, no live crabs, and no anemones taken home.
• Leave driftwood, egg cases and seaweed where they lie.
• Check pockets and buckets before you leave the beach.

Be a Quiet, Careful Visitor

Finally, remember that you are sharing the shore with animals that are already stressed by the simple business of being out of water. Move slowly, tread lightly, and keep your voices lower than you might think. Small feet should walk on sand and bare rock rather than crunching across barnacle beds.

If you spot something unusual, such as a stranded jellyfish, a seal pup or an injured bird, keep your distance and report it to the relevant local wildlife organisation rather than intervening yourself.

Do all of this and you will raise children who see the coast as something to be looked after, not just visited. That habit, more than any single day out, is what keeps our rock pools worth returning to for the next generation of small, curious hands.