Life under the pier: ‘It never occurred to me what might be here’

The blood-red tentacles of the beadlet sea anemone seem to wave underwater, beckoning to be touched. I reach out a finger. Caitlin Woombs, engagement officer for the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust (HIWWT), bounds over. “You know how it feels as if they’re sticking to you?” In fact, that’s the sensation of the anemone firing dozens of microscopic harpoons into your skin, in the vain hope that it can reel you into its gaping mouth, she says, flashing a broad grin.

Contemplating this miniature drama is a huddle of volunteers, crouched beneath Ryde Pier on the Isle of Wight. It’s an unexpected place to go searching for sea life, and yet it is abundant here. The pier is a veteran survey site in the Wildlife Trusts’ citizen science Shoresearch programme , a “long-term monitoring project that allows us to understand the wildlife on our shores, and track changes over time,” says Daniele Clifford, marine conservation officer at the organisation. The expedition in Ryde is one of 12 local intertidal surveys scheduled by the HIWWT for 2024, and one of hundreds more that are available to join countrywide each year, under the broader Wildlife Trusts network. Volunteers range in age and experience, and surveying is open to all.

• Volunteers with the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust prepare to begin work

Today’s group of 20-odd is a mix of Isle of Wight residents and others who have ferried across a roiling Solent sea to join in. Curiosity is what brought lifelong island resident Mike Davis here. “I must have been up and down that pier hundreds of times, and it never occurred to me what might be beneath it,” he says. Beside him, one of the pier’s enormous iron struts bristles with barnacles, sponges and oysters, the base tasselled with plush anemones. The surrounding sand is thick with sea lettuce and bladderwrack, strewn with cockles and clams.

• Buckets mark the survey zones, a shore crab, beadlet anemones and mussels, a volunteer peers into a pool

And that’s just the start: the day’s receding spring tide has left us with plenty of sand to cover. Volunteers are armed with clipboards and pens and split into groups. Our task is to move between four zones marked by colourful buckets spread along the length of the pier: in each, we have 30 minutes to record every living thing we see.

“That’s a breadcrumb sponge,” says volunteer Ian Creasey, pointing to an acid-orange mass climbing up the pier. Dutifully, we scribble it down. Creasey grew up crab-fishing off Ryde Pier, and has returned to the island to do his third Shoresearch survey. On previous outings he’s helped to input the data, detective work that involves matching up the species’ names that volunteers scrawl down, with the photos we snap of everything we see. His marine knowledge has flourished through the surveys, he says. “You start to build up this community spirit, where everyone helps each other with identification.” Nearby, we spot opalescent clouds of whelk eggs, crowds of slipper limpets, and olive-toned snakelocks anemones. Dozens upon dozens of sandy tubes sprout from the seafloor, the architectural handiwork of sand mason worms, who will emerge from these chimneys at high tide and cast out delicate nets to catch their food.

• A volunteer photographs their findings

• Chani Courtney holds a common whelk

Island resident Chani Courtney describes scenes of Ryde in summer, when comb jellies float in “like little rainbows” on the tide. But two years ago, her son became ill on this beach, after swimming unknowingly in sewage-tainted water. “I’ve always cared about the wider world, but it made me want to step up,” Courtney says. She is now the regional representative for Surfers Against Sewage, and recently joined Shoresearch to deepen her impact. “I really enjoy contributing to a wider project – you never quite know where your data’s going to go,” she says. For another local, Rachel Brown, learning about nature’s diversity provides a sense of satisfaction: “I have come to see the joy in noticing particular features,” she says. “It’s such a lovely thing to be able to look at something, and identify it.”

• Rachel Brown says she finds satisfaction learning about nature’s diversity

Related: From planting seagrass to spotting seals: how to help look after the UK’s coastline

Today, however, there is one exception even for the survey’s most learned regulars: an unidentifiable grey coil, gooey and brain-like. (Days later, we find out that these are the eggs of a nudibranch sea slug). The alien substance draws a fascinated crowd, before Woombs, conscious of the returning tide, gently moves us along with the promise of more discoveries to come. She started working for HIWWT after learning the ropes as a Shoresearch volunteer herself, and says that leading the surveys is still her favourite part of the job. “What always strikes me is people say, ‘I just never realised that this was on my shore!’ That’s what’s really lovely, we get people to appreciate what we have.”

As we enter the final survey zone, there’s a rush to record. Someone picks up a purple-pincered, velvet swimming crab; another unearths a king scallop. There are several hairy hermit crabs, and dahlia anemones bloom across the sand. At the pier end, we wander into a field of seagrass: such meadows are nurseries for marine life, and a rare fragment of the vast grasslands that once lined this coast. HIIWT runs separate volunteer programmes to restore these verdant meadows, once more.

• Volunteers search for and photograph living creatures on the beach next to Ryde Pier

The seagrass is a reminder of the conservation goals that drive these intertidal surveys. The information from Ryde Pier will be plugged into Shoresearch’s database, revealing, for instance, that this year has seen a marked decline in the masses of sea squirts that used to live along the pier, says Woombs. It’s a mystery to solve. But in the past, Shoresearch surveys have also identified rare species that have led to the establishment of marine conservation zones in parts of the country. “People like to see a direct correlation between what they’re doing, and an impact,” says Woombs. She believes that this potential is partly what keeps her volunteers coming back: facing a steady stream of news about environmental destruction, it can feel empowering to act – even if that means simply naming something on the shore.

We head back, windswept and numb-fingered, but revitalised by the sea. One of the volunteers presses half a scallop shell into my hand, perfectly flat, and outlined in an iridescent mauve. A token to remember Ryde by.

• Dusk approaches and work under the pier winds up