Life under the pier: “It never occurred to me what could be here”

And that’s just the beginning: the outgoing spring tide has left us with plenty of sand to cover. Volunteers are armed with clipboards and pens and are divided into groups. Our task is to move between four areas marked by colorful buckets stretched along the length of the pier: in each, we have 30 minutes to record every creature we see.

“This is a bread sponge,” says volunteer Ian Creasey, pointing to an acid-orange mass clinging to the pier. With devotion, we scribble it. Creasey grew up crabbing at Ryde Pier and has returned to the island to do his third Shoresearch survey. On previous outings he’s helped to enter the data, detective work that involves matching species names volunteers dig down with photos we snap of everything we see. His nautical knowledge has blossomed through surveys, he says. “You start to build this community spirit, where everyone helps each other with identification.” Nearby, we spot opalescent clouds of mushroom eggs, swarms of slipper and olive-colored snake anemones. Dozens and dozens of sandpipes sprout from the seabed, the architectural work of sand mason worms, who will emerge from these chimneys at high tide and spin delicate webs to catch their food.

Islander 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 fell ill on this beach, after unknowingly swimming in sewage-contaminated waters. “I’ve always cared about the wider world, but this made me want to grow up,” says Courtney. She is now the regional representative for Surfers Against Wheage, and recently joined Shoresearch to deepen her impact. “I really enjoy contributing to a wider project – you never know where your data is going to go,” she says. For another local, Rachel Brown, learning about nature’s diversity provides a sense of satisfaction: “I’ve come to see the joy in noticing special features,” she says. “It’s such a beautiful thing to be able to look at something and identify it.”

Today, however, there is an exception for even the most savvy survey regulars: an unidentifiable, pale, brain-like gray spiral. (Days later, we discover that these are the eggs of a nudibranch sea slug). The alien substance draws a mesmerized crowd, before Woombs, aware 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 leading surveys is still her favorite part of the job. “What always stands out to me is people saying, ‘I just never realized this was happening. OWN coast!’ That’s what’s really cool, we make people appreciate what we have.”

As we enter the final survey area, there is a rush to register. One gets a purple, velvety swimming crab; another pulls out a king scallop. There are some hairy hermit crabs, and dahlia anemones bloom in the sand. At the end of the pier, we wander into a field of sea grass: such meadows are nurseries for marine life and a rare fragment of the vast grasslands that once covered this coast. HIIWT runs special volunteer programs to once again restore these green meadows.

The seagrass is a reminder of the conservation goals that drive these intertidal surveys. Information from Ryde Pier will be fed into Shoresearch’s database, revealing, for example, that this year there has been a marked decline in the amount of manta rays living along the pier, Woombs says. It’s a mystery to be solved. But in the past, Shoresearch surveys have also identified rare species that have led to the creation of marine conservation areas in some parts of the country. “People like to see a direct correlation between what they’re doing and an impact,” says Woombs. She believes this potential is partly what keeps her volunteers coming back: faced with a constant stream of news about environmental destruction, it can feel empowering to act – even if it means just naming something in coast

We turn back, blown by the wind and fingers numb, but revived by the sea. One of the volunteers presses half a scallop shell into my hand, perfectly flat and outlined in an iridescent purple. A token to remember Ryde by.