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Pembrokeshire's clean coastal waters are home to seals, dolphins, porpoises, basking sharks, and even the occasional whale. Offshore reefs support sponges and sea squirts; the county's estuaries provide a haven for colourful anemones, and also sea cucumbers; while crabs and flatfish thrive in shallow inlets and bays.
The vast tracts of sand revealed at low tide provide a vital food source for large numbers of wading birds.
A Quick Look at Some of Pembrokeshire's Marine Life
Sea Squirts and Sea Cucumbers
Sea Squirts are considered to be our sea-dwelling, vertebrate, distant ancestors.
A sea cucumber is, in fact, not a plant but an animal. It has hundreds of suction-cap feet that enable it to propel itself along the sea floor. It lives on a diet of dead or decaying organic matter, algae, and plankton.
Coral
Hard corals such as the Scarlet-and-gold cup coral found in Pembrokeshire are made up almost completely of calcium carbonate.
Cup coral is known as a solitary coral as it lives as an individual rather than fused with others to form a colony.
Weymouth carpet coral is the smallest colonial hard coral. It grows in clusters up to 5cms across. A rare species, key UK sites are found in Pembrokeshire and the Channel Islands.
Red Maerl is a calcified seaweed resembling a miniature coral reef and is an important habitat for a diverse range of marine animals and plants which live amongst it.
Eelgrass
Eelgrass beds develop in intertidal and shallow subtidal areas on sand and mud. This plant stabilises the substratum, provides an important source of organic matter, and gives shelter to a number of species - for instance, it creates an essential nursery area for flatfish.
All three of the UK's eelgrass species are now scarce. Eelgrass in North Haven, Skomer is monitored on a regular basis under the Pembrokeshire Marine Nature Reserve work programme.
Aquatic Mammals
Grey seals are one of the least common species of seal globally. West Wales supports about 2 per cent of the world population. Coastal Pembrokeshire has the largest breeding colony of grey seals in southern Britain.
Pembrokeshire is also one of the best places in the UK to see the Harbour Porpoise. Weighing in at just 55-70 kilos, it is one of the world's smallest cetaceans. You can also see here Bottlenose Dolphin which can grow to 2.5-3.8m in length, and can weight as much as 650kg.
Another aquatic leviathan is the Basking Shark, which grows up to 9.8m long. However, this creature poses no threat to humans as it feeds exclusively on plankton.
The mighty Orca has also been spotted in Pembrokeshire's waters. This whale is distinctive because of its eye-catching black and white markings.
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