Many thanks to Ian Davies for this interesting news about a rare fish to UK waters found on Meols beach. Ian was walking on the front at Meols last Saturday when he spotted this Triggerfish that had been washed up. Ian says:
it was fairly fresh and probably had only been dead just a few days. Up until then I wasn’t aware that we found them in our waters as we have only seen them previously in the Indian Ocean. I sent the images to the Marine Conservation Society and Dr Sue Kinsey kindly replied:
They are commonly found in the Med but never used to occur in British waters. However over the past 50 years they have been appearing more and more regularly as a summertime visitor in the south and finding their way further and further north year by year as the average sea temperature increases, so possibly an indicator of Climate change. They’re commonly caught by fishermen in trawls and pots around the south coast of the UK. Apparently they also wash up regularly on beaches as the sea temperature drops or after large storm events too.
Jo Hanik, senior coastal ranger for Wirral Council also suggests you visit this site for more information about triggerfish.
I’ve never seen a triggerfish down on the beach myself – but how about you? Have you ever seen anything unusual on the sand or in a rock pool at Red Rocks? I seem to remember seeing a dead sheep a few years ago, though that’s not quite the same thing!
Oh, I’ve noticed a couple of chaps with metal detectors down on the sand in the last week or so off North Promenade …do they know something we don’t?
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