From as far back as she can remember, Judy Mann was captivated by the amazing array of sea life in rock pools
close to her home, and at an early age she had already decide that one day she would be a marine scientist.
Today, in her position as the CEO of the South African Association for Marine Biological Research
at Durban's uShaka Marine World, the rock pools have not lost any of that fascinating allure
they had when she explored them for the first time......
As we walk along the sandy shores along our coast we often encounter rocky shore areas.
Now these rocky shore areas have been shaped by millions of years of wave action and
they really are an incredible home to a wide range of different animals.
They're also divided into all sorts of different zones ranging right from the dry, harsh zone where
the animals are very seldom wet, right through to the area closest to the sea where we're going to have
the waves pounding on them bringing their food. So we've got lots of different zones that
we are able to have a look at when we come down to the rocky shores.
....and taking a walk on the rocky shores is just what I opted to do when Judy invited me to explore
the incredible diversity of marine life along a section of the KwaZulu-Natal Coast.
So many people think that the only way they can really explore the ocean is to be a deep-sea diver
but here on the rocky shores we've got the most amazing range of a life.
It really shows you what's out there but it's accessible, you don't have to any special equipment,
just make sure you've got some good shoes. And today we are really going to explore this area and show how
anybody who's interested in our natural world can become a mini marine biologist right here along our coast.
I've always just thought that everything that was rough on a rock I called it a barnacle.
Can you just explain what are the differences going on here?
Okay, that's a good guess but at least you thought of it as an animal, which is a good start.
Most people just think they're part of the rock and they don't even think that they're standing on animals
when they're walking along here. So let's have a look. The first thing we can see here are oysters,
these are called sun oysters, each one of them is an oyster that you can see over here;
and they've got a really, really tight fitting door or sort of closing to the top of the oyster shell.
The oyster as you know, anyone who has eaten an oyster, is a little soft bodied snail
So the oyster lives inside here and then he closes it with the top of his shell, you can see these are all closed;
and the reason for these little grooves and things you can see how closely and tightly they are able to close
is because they live up here on the high shore, so now with a high tide they need to be able to keep
their moisture inside their bodies so they will close up very, very tightly.
You'll notice that with all of the animals that you see here on the high shore the ability to close off
or else the ability to really hide so that they don't get dry. Are these protected these oysters?
No, you can harvest oysters but obviously you need to have the right permits and all the rest of it.
Now, the next thing that you were right on, these are barnacles, now barnacles are actually really, really  interesting
because if you look at them, they look pretty much like snails but in actual fact they're a type of crab,
which is very strange, they are the same family as the crab and the rock lobsters.
Now, what these little guys do is that they have a little larval stage that swims around in the water,
well it doesn’t really swim it sort of floats around in the water, it’s very tiny,
when that little larvae is ready to settle, it will settle down on the rock but it wants to make sure that there's
enough food for it so what it will do it will dance a little jig. So imagine this tiny little
microscopic larvae dancing and that little  jig is making sure that it's got enough space
because remember that once this barnacle sets down on the rock, that's it,
he's not going anyway, so he's got to make sure he chooses the right place when he settles down.
so he will dance a little jig, and then sits down on his head, makes himself a little cement base,
and then grows this shell around him, and you can see each one of these has got a little shell.
Now that is the barnacle animal that you can see that I'm pointing to over there - you can see him over there.
And at high tide what will happen is that will open up and this animal will stick out out its little jointed legs
And will wave them in the water and that's how it gets it's food. So it's amazing that these animals that we
just walk along, we don't even think of them as being incredible little animals perfectly adapted to the high shore area.
We are going to take a little stroll down there, just be careful of your footing because it can be a bit slippery,
and we're are going to look at the animals as they slowly get revealed, we will be able to see more and more
as the tide goes out. Now just look quite closely, every now and then you will see a wave break
and as it moves back you will see little squirts of water, those are common animals aptly called the sea squirt.
And what it's doing is it's just closing its little siphon and we'll have a look at it there,
but you can see it’s squirting quite nicely. Now interestingly here - this an amazingly beautiful little tide pool
and this tide pool is used by all sorts of people and even dogs - they have a nice swim here.
Now what's quite interesting with this particular area is all of these hard corals which are really quite remarkable
So we're very, very privileged here that we've got this wide range of hard corals
and you almost don't even need to get wet to see them.So we'll have a look at these just now.
Fantastic! And they are all different colours as well, so there are obviously all different species
and I've seen a lot of fish in here!
It's a lovely, lovely spot. There lots of different fish here, so this is a lovely little ecosystem all by itself.
And you can come and swim here? Absolutely! You can swim, you can snorkel and just right here on our coast.
We are so, so privileged.
We just need to be careful here.......here is a lovely little bed of baby mussels.
So they’ve all attached themselves here and they are obviously living reasonably
happily but I don’t think they are going to get much bigger.
So they won’t grow into adult size mussels from here? Probably not from here.
They need a lot more food and they're not going to get enough here. This area is probably dry too often.
Now I’m watching what I’m walking on because I’m so worried! What are these here?
These are all little worms. So this is a whole bed of worms.
Each little worm lives inside its own tube and it'll be able to close itself here.......
So at high tide, we would have it probably open and it would be feeding, it's a filter feeder.
And at low tide It's closed up like this. Oh dear! Look what we've got here.
This might look like just an innocuous piece of plastic but unfortunately plastic is becoming one of the most
common pollutants along our coast and what's really interesting is that it’s not only the plastic that you can see.
Plastics break down into tiny, tiny little particles....so we've got things called micro plastics which are almost
invisible to the human eye, but if you imagine something like a mullet, which is a filter feeder,
and many other animals are filter feeders; they are feeding from tiny little particles of food in the water.
They don't know that some of those tiny little particles are not food. They're actually small, tiny pieces of plastic.
So those animals are actually ingesting ........they're eating plastic.
So the plastic pollution problem is a serious problem along our coast and
the good news is it's something that each of us can actually do something about. So we can recycle,
we can make sure we don’t want plastic bags when we don’t need them and we just use plastics with respect.
Plastics don't have to be a part of our life, they can be something that we can use but
we need to use them wisely and then we can actually help little animals like this in our oceans.
Judy with you experiencing so much along our shoreline over many years have you seen
a deterioration in the animal and plant life due to plastic being in this environment?
That’s a really interesting question because along our coast we’ve got good news stories and we’ve got bad news stories.
So we’ve got some areas, especially those that are in our protected areas
that are really doing well and that are looking good; and we've got other areas that unfortunately,
particularly because of people using what’s on the rocks, they’re not looking so good.
So in terms of plastic pollution, it's really hard to see direct effects along the coast but certainly in terms
of people using the coastline we can see effects where people have over harvested but then we've got the good
news areas, where many people are actually protecting areas of coastline that are close to them.
So we've got a lot of people who are wanting to look after their little bit of rocky shores and that's really the solution.
We can't rely on government for everything, we need to look after our own environment
This is actually quite interesting because you can see lots and lots of snail shells here and
it looks like they all just sort of gathering together, but I think in actual fact these are all snails that have died.
Living inside these little snails are hermit crab you can just see their little pincers there.
Now often what happens is that kids come down to the rocky shore areas and they like to collect them.
So they explore the rocks collect them and then drop them all off here.
Now what's really good about that is that the kids are exploring the rocks, which is fantastic,
but what we always encourage people to do is if you take something put it back where you found it.
I wouldn't like to be taken from my home and dumped in Joburg or something
Just like these little snails wouldn't like to be taken and dumped somewhere else. So it's a good idea to explore,
It's fantastic, but we just need to make sure that each of the animal goes back to where it was found before hand.
So these little guys are probably going to try and find their way home.
Just going to take a walk down because the tide is out quite nicely and we can have a look at this nice bed of mussels.
Just watch out these little animals can be a bit slippery.
Okay.....it's like a whole new world here.
It is a new world, for most people it is a new world.It's just amazing.
Mussels are interesting animals because each one is a snail. It lives inside a shell.
The shell is made up of two parts. They're called bivalves, and when the mussel is feeding it opens,
It's a filter feeder as we've mentioned before and then when it's dry like this, it'll close up to protect the moisture.
Now, what's really interesting - if you pull this muscle, it's quite hard to get it off the rocks and what's happened is -
the mussel has what is called a beard and uses that to attach itself to the rocks
so they are attached to the rocks quite firmly which is quite useful, as you can see it’s getting a bit wet here.
So when the waves are pounding here the mussels are actually quite firmly attached to the rocks and they’ll open up
and then they'll get their food; and on the mussels are growing a whole lot of barnacles
which are also filter feeders so when the waves are coming over here these little barnacles will be feeding as well.
So this is a lovely bed of mussels and you'll only find beds of mussels down here on the low shore,
you won't find them further up because obviously there's not enough food for them, so we're finding them
on the low shore, but just on this ledge is a lot of other life right here. What would you guess plants or animal?
I would have said plant. Okay, that's a good guess. A long time ago scientists actually thought that they
were plants because they don't seem to do any of the things that animals do, but in actual fact
it is a very, very simple animal really just a whole collection of cells.
Now, interestingly if you take a sponge and you pass it through a sieve the cells will all get back together again and almost create
a new sponge, so that’s sort of like taking your boerewors and asking it turn back into a cow.
So this is a very simple animal, the reason it's not a plant is because it doesn't have the ability to make its own food
and that's what makes a plant a plant. When we were talking about the cucumber earlier
it was really hard to see it and this just shows how amazingly camouflaged they are.
They are look like part of the rocks. They do look like part of the rocks. If you live in this area
you’ve got to be able to protect yourself. This guy clearly can’t runaway and he’s not going to attack anything
so his best form of defensive is actually to just blend in, and you'll often find
Attached to his skin are lots of tiny little stones and that's part of him defending himself part of his camouflage.
So he's got a little tiny tube feet on his body and he had just hold on to these little stones
sometimes but of seaweed, sometimes bits of shell and that's how he will actually camouflage himself. So it's staying alive,
you've got to do that to stay alive, and in this case if you can't run away and you can't fight
you're going have to hide; and you'll see lots of animals will do that as their form of defense. Now, interestingly
here we've got something else that's adopted a different form of defense. So this is a sea urchin and
that little animal is one of those round sea pumpkins that you often find on the beach and
his form of defense is to have spines all around his body so that's how he is defending himself
and he's holding onto the rocks with lots of tiny little tube feet, which are little tiny feet
with a little sucker at the end; and I cannot dislodge him from here. Now I'm touching this urchin,
but if you see an urchin with long thin spines don't touch them because those little tips will break off and
they're really, really painful when they get into you and you have to almost wait for them to break down because if you try and
dig them out, they just break down into small pieces. These are all anemones,
they look a bit like blobs, but if you go further down you'll be able to see that they're actually little animals.
They've got a body like a sack. So this is the body over here, they've got a mouth in the middle
and surrounding the mouth are a whole lot of tentacles and those tentacles are what they use to catch their food.
So they'll wave those tentacles around and they'll catch their food
They'll then digest the food and then any waste material is passed out through the same opening.
Here you can see one there he is just starting to open, so as the water comes in - he goes great food time -
and he will start to open, when the water comes down again you can see  he goes quite flat.
Those ones look just like stones – shiny stones.You would never guess that they were animals.
So that's quite interesting. Here you can see that’s the little mouth there
and there you can just see under my finger you can you see those little cells.
This is quite an interesting area because the're blue soft corals and there are also hard corals.
Actually this is quite incredible here......just imagine this is actually a whole colony of animals,
So if you feel it, it's really really soft. And what you're feeling is the living tissue,
so this is a hard coral that's growing on this rock and this hard coral is quite unusual
if you think of it as an animal; each little animal is very similar to that anemone
that we looked at earlier but on a much smaller scale. So you’ve got a little tube like body
with a mouth surrounded by tentacles but what the corals do is they create a calcium carbonate skeleton
which is this huge massive thing that you can feel here. Now the way I kind of understand is it they all
share the same apartment building but each little animal has its own front door
which is just a way of understanding it. Now you don't often see corals in rock pools. So this is quite unusual and
what's interesting is that the corals generally grow in warm tropical waters. So they grow sort of from Durban north;
you don't get that many hard corals further south but what you do get further south are lots of soft corals and
here is a little soft coral here and you'll see this one if you feel it very gently...... it's silky
and it doesn’t have that have that hard body structure, so it doesn’t have that calcium carbonate structure.
There you can feel it – it’s very, very soft but if you look at it the same sort of structure.....the little body with
the little mouth surrounded by tentacles...... quite different. As you get further south, you get lots of different soft corals and
interestingly coral only grow in warm, clean water – the reason for that is that inside these coral tissues are
tiny, tiny little algae called zooxanthellae. Now these little algae will photosynthesize
so they will produce food which the coral then uses and that's what enables corals to get to those huge sizes.
If you imagine the Great Barrier Reef is made by tiny little animals and that's because they've got that zooxanthellae
in their bodies. So in their tissues little algae are photosynthesizing - producing food. So that's what helps them to grow.
So that's why you'll only find corals where light is going to penetrate because those
little, tiny algae cells need sunlight in order photosynthesize.
This is a perfect example of camouflage. If you look over here – it’s quite difficult to see but actually there's
a sea cucumber here: here is its mouth, here’s the body all covered with lots of tiny little stones to
camouflage it and here is the anus and the pooh are these little bits of soil that you can see, little pelts.
The cucumber will feed by taking in bits of grains of sand, inside his body , he takes off the food that's
around those sand grains and he passes out clean sand sort of rather like what an earth worm would do.
Right the way through here we’ve got an urchin, just gently take him off the rocks – there we go.
You can see his got a body which is this little shell and then lots of these spines around the whole body
and if I turn him upside down. There we go.....the animal lives inside this shell that he has created
and around the whole body are these spines which gives the urchin its familiar look.
If we look underneath you’ll see that he has got a mouth in the middle and then these are five rows
of little tiny tube feet and that's what it'll use for locomotion and you can see he's got five rows.
So that's one, two, three, four, five. So he’s got what’s called five ray symmetry,
So that's an unusual form of symmetry; we have a left and a right side, he’s got five sides. We will pop him back there.
We're right here on the low shore and we've got this incredible range of life. If you remember up near
the top we had barnacles, we had oysters, and we had some limpets. Down here there is
just a whole range of different plant and animal life. Now I’m going to talk a little bit about the plant life
because often we don't think of plants as being so important, but remember that
plants are the foundation of the whole food web and interestingly enough most plants,
these little algae that we can see here, these algae here, are not eaten when they are adult
they're actually eaten when they all break down and they become part of the the food web.
What happens is that they break down and so they make small, small little bits of food that the filter feeders eat.
So that the mussels that we saw earlier on would be feeding on little  bits of broken-down algae.
I’m just loving the colours that are around here, you can see there’s a brightness. Everything looks alive!
But it is alive! That's it. Look at this. This beautiful purple is a type of zoanthid.
So these animals are like little anemones but there is a whole colony of them. Here are some brown ones,
here are some green ones. So there is just incredible diversity here and I'd like you to meet one of my
favorite friends along the rocky shores. This is a sea cucumber....just carefully removing him from his little hole
and we will put him back again.
He's alive! He is alive. If you look there, that's his front end and that's where he has tentacles that
he'll put out into the water and he'll gather his food; this is his body here and here’s his anus.....
but just hold him. Feels beautiful doesn’t he? Oh my goodness! I've never held a  cucumber. A sea cucumber.
So a really interesting little animal. What's quite fascinating and this might be a little gross but this is its anus;
some fish have developed an interesting habit they live inside the anus of the cucumber.
So they're quite safe inside there and you know to add insult to injury they'll often nibble on the gonads of the animal,
so they nibble on his reproductive organs.What I’m going to do now is I’m just going to put him back carefully
where we found him....there he goes. Now if we look along here, you can see all sorts of different types of algae.
Feel this. There are so many different textures. Yes. So this is a coralline algae.
So this algae, to protect itself has got a special substance in it and that makes it
less sort of tasty to other animals; and then you've got another sort of algae like this one which
is very smooth.........a green algae. So there are lots of different textures, lots of different colors
and that’s what we call biodiversity....it’s the amazing range of life.....it’s just wonderful!
After our fascinating exploration of the coastal zone, a swim in the rocky pool was a great way to cool off and
enjoy close up some of the many species to be found along here.........
.......the whole experience was like swimming in a large aquarium.
