Species point records from 1988 MNCR minor south-coast inlets in England survey

The survey area was on the south coast of Britain, and was divided into four sections:- 1. the harbour and estuary at Yarmouth, at the western end of the Isle of Wight, 2. sections of the shore at the eastern end of the Isle of Wight, from King's Quay to Ryde Sands encompassing Wootton Creek, 3. the estuary at Lymington, on the north Solent shore, 4. the estuary of the River Adur at Shoreham-by-the-sea in West Sussex. The catchment areas of these inlets were primarily rural with some urban influence from the towns nearby. The exception to this was the estuary at Shoreham, which was primarily urban, with some industry on the shores of the lower estuary. All of the inlets concerned were influenced by impacts from the leisure industry, mostly from boating. Lymington in particular is a large yachting centre. Twenty-one sites were visited. All were surveyed littorally, and two were additionally surveyed sublittorally. The shores were all of sediment, as is most common in the English Channel east of Portland. They varied from very fine, silty mud at Lymington, Yarmouth, Wootton Creek and one site in the Adur estuary; to predominantly sand at King' Quay, Ryde Sands, and two sites within the Adur estuary. Three sites also had boulder and cobble shores, one in the estuary at Yarmouth, one at King's Quay, and one in the Adur estuary. One site at Yarmouth was of vertical stone wall, and one site at Lymington was of steeply sloping stone wall. Of the sites surveyed sublittorally, both had substrata of fine sandy mud, with hard substrata provided by wooden piles for mooring. The fauna and flora of the sites were mostly typical of estuarine sites on the south coast of Britain. Muddy substrata were dominated by polychaetes and oligochaetes, with few bivalves and amphipods; slightly sandier sites had more bivalves. Sandy sites were also dominated by polychaetes, but with more bivalves. The cobble sites had a limited variety of algae, with anemones, sponges, ascidians, barnacles, and a mussel bed on one site in the Adur. The nature conservation importance of the areas surveyed has been assessed, with sites and species considered to be of national, regional or local importance identified. Records currently considered sensitive have been removed from this dataset.