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Members of La Société Guernesiaise visited Sark for the day in October and descended to the Gouliot Caves at low tide. The Gouliot Caves are renowned for their marine life. The walls are covered with anemones, hydroids, sponges, sea squirts bryozoans and many other creatures. Many animals can be seen here which are otherwise found only by diving. Before the aqualung became common the Gouliot Caves were one of the few places that these animals could be studied.
The Gouliot Caves traverse the Gouliot Headland, on the west coast of Sark three times from north to south, with other entrances to the west. Because of the great tidal range in Sark (10m at springs) some of caves are filled with sea water at high tide with a very strong tidal currents. These currents bring food to the inhabitants of the caves and probably explain the marvelous diversity of life inside. This view shows two of the entrances to the caves from the south, but these can only be reached from this side by boat. The path down is on the opposite side of the headland. Here our party is seen entering the caves by climbing down a scree of fallen boulders.
The first cave at the bottom is the highest above low-tide mark and here are seen many Beadlet Anemones. The red ones are Actinia equina, the green ones are probably a different species Actinia prasina
At the mouth of this cave we found the unusual sea slug Onchidella celtica. This is a little black warty slug about 1cm long and is related to the Pulmonate land snails rather than to the marine Opisthobranch sea slugs
At this point the tide had not gone down as much as we hoped and we had to wade. This picture shows Terry Ozanne, who is always well prepared, duct taping his waterproof trousers to his boots in a vain attempt to keep dry.
The next cave has a much greater variety of animals, including several sorts of sea squirts, among them the colonial Botryllus schlosseri
and the red Gooseberry Sea Squirt Dendrodoa grossularia.
The roof of the cave here was covered with two species of the hydroid Tubularia. This is the larger one Tubularia indivisa which lives in a horny tube about 5cm long.
On the walls were white Dead Man's Fingers Alcyonum digitatum, a Soft Coral,
seen here with pink varieties of the Jewel Anemone Corynactis viridis and white tubes of an Annelid worm either Filograna implexa or Salmacina dysteri.
Also common was the beautiful Bryozoan Bugula turbinata, like a miniature Monkey Puzzle tree, again seen with Jewel Anemones. Jewel Anemones come in many colour varieties including white, green, pink, purple, often with contrasting tentacles. There is a brown one with pink tentacles at the bottom of this picture.
The Gouliot Caves are famous locally for their white anemones. These are the Plumose Anemone, Metridium senile, which are much commoner in England than in the Channel Islands. They are up to about 20cms long. These can be found in several patches in the darkest part of the caves.
Another species of anemone in the caves is Sagartia elegans, very pretty with its contrasting tentacles.
But everywhere in these inner caves the walls are covered with anemones, barnacles and sponges
There are many species of sponge in the caves. The prettiest is probably the bright yellow Boring Sponge Cliona celata, so called because of its habit when small of boring in mollusc shells.
Another interesting sponge is the black Dercitus bucklandi which grows stretched across cavities in the rock.
We had now reached the end of the cave where you can carry on only by swimming and where light streams in f rom above illuminating the Jewel Anemones on the walls
Finally we climbed back from the caves up the narrow and dangerous path back to the top of the Sark cliffs.
