We took some of our second-year students for a field trip to the coast at Souter Point near South Shields today and with 100 pairs of eyes scouring the rock pools they were bound to find some interesting marine life. Above is a blue-rayed limpet Helcion pellucidum, with shocking electric-blue stripes, that we found feeding on a kelp fronds. That iridescent colour is caused by microscopic, layered plates of aragonite in the shell that reflect back incident light waves so that they interfere with one another and produce the vibrant blue hue.
This delightful little mollusc, less than a centimetre long, is an Arctic cowrie, Trivia arctica - minute compared with its tropical cousins but equally exquisite in its shape and pattern.
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