Author: lowenna

A different side of Cornwall has drifted into view. It’s the season for uncovering shoreline secrets, from the easily overlooked shifts in coastal flora and fauna – those unique sights and experiences you can only find by the sea – to digging into local art and culture, and how to serve the freshest catches made out in the wild seas.

This week, we dive into the secret life of kelp…

Kelp is often overlooked in nature, controversial in food, and infrequently understood or appreciated. Yet this alga holds more interest and potential than you might imagine.

Take a walk along the beach, and look…down. Away from the birds floating easily overhead and the white ribbons of the waves as they continuously crash over each other. At your feet you find kelp among the varieties of seaweed spread out by the tide in unpredictable bundles and twists. This mass of water plants is evidence of a storm now past that had the strength to move the waves to tear the body of this seaweed from their root-like holdfasts attached to the rocks.

“In a flat clear sea when there’s lots of sunlight the kelp moves back and forth almost hypnotically with the movement of the tides, swells and currents”.

KELP CONSERVATION

These strands formed a part of the kelp forests under the tide line, sheltering a vast array of sea life: food to others and protecting the coast from erosion by absorbing the power of the waves. Like forests they also act as carbon sinks, and new research is attempting to prove the significance of their environmental contribution. Katie Maggs – a Penzance-based snorkel instructor @tonicofthesea on Instagram – is working to progress conservation with Mounts Bay Marine Conservation Group – @mountsbaymarinegroup. The group are “currently working with Cornwall Wildlife Trust monitoring kelp in the bay using a snorkelling method with GPS.” This work includes areas that have been inaccessible to previous efforts that solely use equipment attached to boats.

Because she has been snorkelling in the same places almost daily, Katie has become easily attuned to changes in patches of kelp along the coast, changes that are so important to monitor and understand as the first step in any conservation work. Katie also took part in the award winning film Green Ocean Gold which illustrates some of the ways kelp and other seaweeds are being used to imitate plastic, and provide solutions for the climate crisis.

FOREST SWIMMING

But for Katie, the real joy is to catch sight of these forests underwater. “In a flat clear sea when there’s lots of sunlight the kelp moves back and forth almost hypnotically with the movement of the tides, swells and currents”.

After all, it is here that it serves as a habitat for marine life. A snorkelling trip with Katie may uncover “slinking baby seals, colour changing cuttlefish or curious octopus”. Details like this contribute to the mental health benefits of Katie’s snorkelling sessions, which are socially prescribed by the NHS for well-being.

Recently she has also begun a project “using [her] own handmade seaweed ink to create drawings that reflect the narrative of research on kelp’s abilities as a carbon sink”

Image credit: Sarah Jane Humphreys (seaweed painting)

HIGHLY PRIZED

Washed up on the beach, or carefully foraged, kelp is a prized find for many, to be processed into health supplements, beauty products, fertilisers, plastic alternatives, art or food. This versatility is thanks to the mineral rich sea environment they are grown in, which gives them a higher nutrient mix than land plants.

Sarah Jane Humphrey – a Falmouth-based artist @sarahgalerie – enjoys using kelp in her cooking at home as it “brings food to life and has so many health properties”. When she can’t forage for it, she uses a dried version from The Cornish Seaweed Company. Having realised the broad benefits of sea plants, the company has been a pioneer in the UK seaweed industry. They have developed a range of products, all sustainably foraged and handled to preserve their nutrients and help people to use this in their everyday cooking. The complex flavour these plants bring to food is also being realised by a growing number of chefs too, like Jude Kereama at Kota who uses seaweed in his mussel fritters with seaweed tartar dish.

Image credit: Sarah Jane Humphreys

GOLDEN TONES

Sarah’s work as a botanical artist closely draws on her love for the sea. She creates intricate depictions of seaweed found in intertidal zones along the coast. Recently she has also begun a project “using [her] own handmade seaweed ink to create drawings that reflect the narrative of research on kelp’s abilities as a carbon sink” by creating a tangible connection to the sea.

When working with seaweeds in the studio, Sarah’s days spent freediving and photographing rock pools are a continual source of inspiration. It is in these moments, as the quiet hush of the sea fills her ears, that the sea and kelp forests come together, and the kelp begins to move like flames as they slip through pools of brightness, to highlight their “golden tones and flowing forms”.

If you find yourself surrounded by seaweed storm trails this Secret Season, and you stumble across the telltale ribbons and holdfast of kelp, look upon it with a new appreciation.

Eager to explore more? Watch Seaweed Foraging on Film to learn about finding and cooking seaweed or get rock-pool ready with Dr Ben Holt at The Rock Pool Project.

Stay by the sea this Secret Season…

West of Port Isaac, the cliffs and coves reveal echoes of the vanished people who once called this stretch of the Cornish coast home

Framed by the twin headlands of Doyden Point and Kellan Head, the narrow channel of Port Quin is a quiet place these days: a cluster of National Trust cottages, a stout harbour wall, a stone slipway. But two centuries ago, it would have been a hive of activity.

“On the cliff, a huer, or watchman, scans the horizon, looking for the shadow of the next shoal”

Imagine, the smell of fish and tobacco smoke, a boat hauled up on the slip. Up the lane, men are scooping salt into cellars to preserve the morning catch. Others work on seine nets, patching the mesh in the sun. There’s banter, laughter, salty cursing. On the cliff, a huer, or watchman, scans the horizon, looking for the shadow of the next shoal. When he sees it, he shouts ‘Hevva!’ and the men drop their tasks, clamber into boats and head out to sea. They’ll stay out as long as their nets can hold fish.

Beyond the postcards

Sometimes it’s easy to forget places like Port Quin had a past beyond the postcards. Port Isaac local John Watts Trevan makes some fascinating fishing observation in his 1834 memoir. But apart from the old cottages and pilchard drying sheds (colloquially known as ‘palaces’), little remains of the industry now. What happened?

“In the cliffs around Port Quin, mineral streaks the rock like veins.”

According to legend, Port Quin’s fishermen were all drowned by a terrible storm – perhaps as punishment for fishing on the Sabbath – and the village was abandoned. In fact, Port Quin was a casualty of economic decline. In the mid 19th century, dwindling fish stocks – particularly in the key species of pilchard and herring – and the slow collapse of Cornish mining forced thousands of families to emigrate – mostly to South America, Australia and Canada. The people of Port Quin were probably among them.

Signs of times past

While the industry is gone, the coast path from Port Quin looks much the same as when the pilchard fishermen and the miners still worked here. Two shafts at Gilson’s Cove Mine, on the coast path from Doyden Point, can still be seen, marked by rings of slate stones. Lead, tin, silver, zinc and antimony – a whitish metal used to make pewter, paint and make-up – were the principal ores mined here. In the cliffs around Port Quin, mineral streaks the rock like veins.

“From Trevan Point, the path descends to Epphaven Cove, a rugged little inlet that’s good for rock-pooling, which also has a small waterfall and natural plunge pool for cooling off on a hot day.”

Near Gilson’s Cove Mine stands another oddity: Doyden Castle, a mock-Gothic folly, built around 1830 by a Wadebridge merchant called Samuel Simmons, who’s said to have used it as a private pleasure den for partying, drinking and gambling.

From Doyden, the coast path climbs up and over Trevan Point – a natural watchtower at 213ft above sea-level, serving-up a fine panorama stretching west to the craggy headland of The Rumps and the offshore island of The Mouls.

From Trevan Point, the path descends to Epphaven Cove, a rugged little inlet that’s good for rock-pooling, which also has a small waterfall and natural plunge pool for cooling off on a hot day. The slate here has sometimes yielded fossils, too, so keep your eyes peeled.

Hidden hideaways

Around the headland to the west lies Lundy Bay, another rocky beach where you can climb down via wooden steps. The cliffs and fields around here are managed by the National Trust for wildlife, cutting back the hawthorn hedges and preserving grassland habitat; it’s a good place for spotting wildflowers, butterflies and birds of prey.

Just above the western edge of the beach is Lundy Hole, where you can peer down and watch the breakers booming under the rock arch: this sea cave is said to have been the hiding place for St Minver fleeing the devil.

A little further west is a cleft in the cliff known as Markham’s Quay. Here, sand and gravel were hauled up from the beach by horse-drawn carts. It’s also a fabled smugglers’ haunt, where contraband was landed under cover of darkness. Was Markham a smuggler, or one of the Preventive men who patrolled the coast and tried to catch them? No one remembers now.

“Nowadays, the headland is a cracking spot for a picnic. In summer, the rocky island off the point, The Mouls, hosts squawking colonies of gannets, kittiwakes, fulmars and sometimes puffins (lundy derives from the old Norse word for puffin).”

Pathways to the past

From here, you can choose either to turn back to Port Quin or hike out another couple of miles past Carnwether Point to The Rumps, which snakes seawards like a sleeping dragon. During the Iron Age, one of north Cornwall’s most important promontory forts stood here. You can make out the outline of the ditches and embankments that protected the fort from assault. Archaeological excavations have turned up artefacts suggesting the people here traded with the Mediterranean.

Nowadays, the headland is a cracking spot for a picnic. In summer, the rocky island off the point, The Mouls, hosts squawking colonies of gannets, kittiwakes, fulmars and sometimes puffins (lundy derives from the old Norse word for puffin). It’s also an infamous shipwreck spot: in 1995, when the Maria Assumpta, the world’s largest square-rigged sailing ship, went down while trying to make Padstow harbour, with the loss of three crew.

All told, the walk from Port Quin to the Rumps is a 6.5 mile return journey – a three-hour hike, there and back. To ease tired limbs, you can book a shipping container sauna courtesy of Cornish Coast Adventures, overlooking the beach where the fishermen once worked. Times have certainly changed at Port Quin.

Discover stays along Cornwall’s storied north coast this Secret Season.