Nippers

Today's Guardian Country Diary is about the return of marine life to the Durham coast at Dawdon, where coal mining waste was dumped onto the beach until Dawdon colliery was closed in 1991. An underwater survey by divers at that time found half a metre of coal silt on the sea floor at Noses Point (in the background of this photo) and water that was so turbid that it was impossible to see any marine life.

Since then the Turning the Tide campaign has cleaned up the beaches, to the point where this beach was recently described in the Guardian as one of the best lesser-known National Trust beaches in the UK 

Click here for more pictures and information about the restored coastline here.

Meanwhile the waves have done their work offshore, washing away the coal spoil, so now it's a beach where you can go rock-pooling again. We found this shore crab amongst the rocks near Noses Point. The pointed abdomen under its body indicates that it's a male.

Catching a shore crab took me back to childhood rock-pooling days, and learning to pick up an angry crab between finger and thumb on either side of the shell. That armoured carapace protects the crab from predators but prevents it reaching above its shell with those powerful nippers. This method of holding them works well with shore crabs but from painful experience I've learned that this is less successful with velvet swimming crabs whose nippers seem to be better articulated and can reach back to deliver a very strong pinch. 

Gifts from the sea

Thursday's Guardian Country Diary describes sea glass collecting at Blast Beach, at Dawdon near Seaham on the Durham coast. 

Until about 20 years ago this beach was used for dumping colliery waste and was such a desolate, polluted place that it was chosen as a location for the opening scenes of the 1992 movie Alien 3. Over the last 15 years this stretch of coastline has undergone a major restoration and improves every year - you can find some photos of the wildlife of Blast beach and the nearby Hawthorn Hive by clicking here and here and here.

It was coal dumping that despoiled this coastline but for over 70 years another kind of industrial waste - glass - was thrown into the sea here. That stopped in 1921 but the glass, now sand-polished into pebbles that are used by local craft jewellers, are still washed ashore with every tide. Some of it even ends up on the other side of the Atlantic.

The bottle works at Seaham was opened by John Candlish in 1853, exploiting the convenient supply of local coal from the Dawdon pit, under the patronage of the 4th. Marquess of Londonderry who whose father built Seaham harbour for coal exporting. 

During its peak period of production the Londonderry Bottle Works employed 500 people, producing 20,000 hand-blown bottles a day and burning 21,000 tonnes of coal every year in two twelve-hour shifts that lit up the night sky with the glow from the furnaces. Every week a cargo of bottles was shipped from Seaham harbour to Rotherhithe in the 'bottleboat'. Waste glass was simply thrown into the sea. 

You can read more about the Londonderry Bottle Works by clicking here.

These polished glass pebbles, mostly in shades of green, blue and amber are still washed ashore 92 years after the bottle works closed.