Natural England

The undersea landscapes of the North East stretch from the sandy mouth of the Humber to the Scottish border. Special to this part of the seas are the underwater caves and chalk pillars off Flamborough Head; the great Rocky Reef, which stretches from the Farnes to Newcastle, with its blue wolf fish; and the sandhills of the Dogger bank, rich in sand eels, which are as tall as Nelson’s Column. Occasionally orcas (killer whales) come to hunt the seals that haunt the reef’s kelp forests.

The distinctive landscape features of this undersea region include:

• The great North Eastern rocky reef stretching along the Northumberland coast for miles. Home to the pretty cuckoo wrasse, the fearsome looking wolf fish, deeplet sea anemones, light bulb sea squirts, edible sea urchins, bottle brush hydroids and much more sealife.
• An ancient landscape of submerged villages - some from Roman times.
• The underwater gullies, cliffs and sea caves around the Farne Islands where kelp forests provide a feeding ground for the playful grey seal.
• Huge expanses of undersea sand hills and plains which provide a hunting ground for thornback rays, diving seabirds, porpoises and even whales that chase the millions of sand eels which live in this landscape.
• Huge beds of brittlestars, a kind of starfish, which lie in dense numbers on the gravelly seabed waving their fragile arms in the air to catch food.

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Panorama

Click the numbers on the image below to find out more about the diverse range of species and habitats.

1. Coastal chalk and limestone cliffs of Yorkshire and Northumberland

The cliffs at Flamborough Head, Yorkshire, rise 150 metres from the sea and support over 200,000 nesting seabirds. Flamborough Head projects well into the North Sea and its name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word 'flaen' meaning 'sword or arrow'.

Sea caves are found along the Northumberland Coast as well as at Flamborough around Whitby. Strong tides are characteristic of the area. Referred to locally as the ‘bobble hole’, at certain times of day the currents hold a boat in one place, bobbing as in a hole. [back to panorama]

2. Seabirds such as auks, puffins and guillemots nest on the cliffs

Among the 200,000 nesting seabirds supported in the cliffs at Flamborough Head are fulmars, razorbills, guillemots, auks, puffins and kittiwakes together with England’s only mainland gannet colony. [back to panorama]

3. Bamburgh Castle and Farne Islands – the offshore Farne Deeps trench is over 100 metres deep

The Farnes are the only group of islands off the east coast of England and their hard volcanic rocks give rise to many underwater gullies, cliffs and sea caves.

This area, dangerous for shipping, is littered with wrecks and much visited by divers. One particularly impressive wreck, the Somali, sits upright in 30 m of water near Beadnell. A 6809-ton steamship bombed and sunk in 1941, much of her 450ft hull is intact, and clothed in abundant plumose anemones, sponges, and dead men’s fingers along with fish such as ballan wrasse.

The gullies, cliffs and sea caves support an abundance of sealife including plumose anemones, and the long brown weed, kelp. Not only do the kelp and the rocks shelter fish such as wrasse, pouting and conger eels but the kelp forests provide a major hunting ground for the large grey seal population found on the Farnes.

The seabed off this coast slopes away evenly to a depth of about 60 metres, except at the Farne Deeps trench which is over 100 metres deep and lies 15-30 km offshore. This is home to large numbers of Dublin Bay prawns or scampi, orange lobster-like crustaceans with long claws for catching prey, which live in burrows dug into soft mud. [back to panorama]

4. Gannets diving for fish

There is a gannet colony at Flamborough Head where thousands of gannets can be seen feeding, diving into the sea at up to 60mph. The fish in this part of the North Sea sustain huge seabird populations – for example, the Farne Islands support at least 142,000 individual seabirds including kittiwake, shag, cormorant, guillemot, puffin and four species of tern. [back to panorama]

5. Sei whale, minke whale and dolphins are found here

The minke whale occurs in small numbers along the Northumberland Coast and offshore, mainly between June and September. Most sightings are within 100 kilometres of the coast and usually of a single whale or a pair. The much larger sei whale has also been sighted further out, north of the Dogger Bank.

The shy small harbour porpoise is seen most often around the Farnes, Lindisfarne, Flamborough and Robin Hood’s Bay, while the white-beaked dolphin is more commonly encountered further out to sea.

The white-sided dolphin is sometimes sighted to the north-east of Flamborough Head, generally between July and September.

Other whales recorded in the area include beluga, common dolphin, and the bottlenose dolphin as well as the occasional killer whale around the Farnes, probably attracted by the large numbers of seals. [back to panorama]

6. Shoals of cod and mackerel – there are many important spawning and nursery areas in the North East

The North Sea was once one of the world’s most productive fishing grounds. Today, the main fish targeted are cod, haddock, whiting, plaice, lemon sole and monkfish. Inshore, there are also lobster, crabs and scampi as well as scallops, cockles and whelks.

There are several important nursery and spawning areas for cod, herring, mackerel and plaice off the North East coast. Herring spawning and nursery areas occur inshore from the Tees area down to Flamborough.

The atlantic salmon and the sea trout also move through the area feeding along reefs and across the sand plains on their way to spawning rivers within the region: the Aln, Coquet, Tyne, Wear, Tees and Esk. [back to panorama]

7. Giant underwater sand dunes of Dogger Bank – home to millions of sand eels

Many of the fish found along this coastline, and many birds, rely on sand eels, small silvery fish, many millions of which live in the clean sands of Dogger Bank.

Huge expanses of the North Sea off the North East coast are dominated by underwater hills and plains of sand and gravel. In some parts of the Dogger Bank these hills or dunes are taller than Nelson’s column. [back to panorama]

8. Mammoth tusks

Mammoth tusks and bones, as well as Roman remains, have been dredged up from this area by fishing boats. Dogger Bank itself comprises a huge expanse of sand hills which was once a landbridge between modern day Denmark and England. It is said that remains of over 50,000 mammoths have been trawled from the seabed here, along with abundant evidence of neolithic and later man, such as bone harpoons and axe heads. Flint arrow heads have also been found offshore from Newcastle.

The ancient land of Dogger Bank is known to archaeologists as ‘Doggerland’ and they have mapped the courses of ancient lakes, hills, rivers and forests to build up a picture of the lost landscape, now submerged beneath the waves.

The seas off North East England are unusually rich in buried ancient landscapes including those of human origin. Remains of more than thirty towns and villages lie on the seabed off Holderness towards Spurn point, where the sea has eaten away the coastline over the last 2,000 years.

More recently Dogger Bank has also been the site of several major sea battles, the last in World War One. [back to panorama]

9. Rocky reef with bright yellow ‘boring’ sponges

On these rocky chalk reefs, several characteristic species which bore into the soft rock are found including the large yellow-coloured boring sponge. [back to panorama]

10. Plaice on the sandy sea bed

Plaice are typical flatfish, oval in shape and often seen on sandy patches in rocky areas. They have bright orange or red spots on the upper side and spend much of their time lying quietly on the bottom, often partly buried. They can change their colour to suit the bottom. In these waters they feed on worms, crustaceans, brittlestars and sand eels. They are an important commercial fish. [back to panorama]

11. Beds of brittlestar starfish

Between the outer sands and the rock reefs lie a number of large gravelly areas covered in a mass of brittlestars, a kind of starfish, which are preyed upon by their cousins, the red sunstars. Large deep-water anemones as big as dinner plates can also be found here. [back to panorama]

12. Thornback rays hunting over the sand dunes

The sand plains and hills of this underwater ‘desert’ are far from lifeless and in sandier stretches are dominated by the attractive clam shell the ‘bean-like tellin’, and hunted over by thornback rays, dogfish, large plaice and other fish which search out the many shrimps, worms and sea-potatoes (heart urchins) that live in the sand. [back to panorama]

13. Dead men’s finger sponges and sea mare’s tail

The soft coral ‘dead men’s fingers’, is a furry white, yellow or pink sponge. Sea mare’s tail is an unusual species found at South Landing on the east coast. [back to panorama]

14. Dinosaur footprints

Dinosaur footprints have been discovered on the sea bed near Robin Hood’s bay. [back to panorama]

15. The Flamborough Front – where the colder water of the north meets warmer waters from the south

A mixture of Atlantic water swept down around Scotland and the nutrient-rich waters of the southern North Sea create the 200-mile-long Flamborough Front.

Both fish and birds, as well as whales, dolphins and porpoises, congregate along the Flamborough Front. The water movements here mean that their food is concentrated in this area. [back to panorama]

16. Grey seals – over 3,000 live off the North East coast.

Around 3,600 grey seals – three-quarters of the English population – live off the North East coast, mostly on the Farnes where the breeding season is from mid-September to early December. The kelp forests are a major hunting ground of the large grey seal population found on the Farnes. These seals often play with the many divers who visit the Farnes, sometimes following them or nibbling at flippers. There are two small populations of common seals on Lindisfarne and at the mouth of the River Tees near Hartlepool, at Seal Sands. [back to panorama]

17. Octopuses lurk in sea caves

Octopuses may be found in the submerged caves at Flamborough where the walls are covered in a solid mosaic of red, orange, white and yellow anemones, sponges and other creatures. The caves also shelter some huge lobsters and conger eels. The wall coverings include beadlet anemone and breadcrumb sponge. There are over 200 such caves. [back to panorama]

18. Light bulb sea squirt

This transparent looking sea creature is half the size of a person’s little finger and looks like an electric light bulb. It is a filter feeder which sucks in water and filters out microscopic organic particles. Strange as it may seem, the sea squirt is more closely related to humans than it is to, say, sea anemones! This is because it is the missing link between vertebrates, like us, and invertebrates. [back to panorama]

19. The Great North Eastern rocky reef extends along the Northumberland coast

A huge rocky reef, extending up to 20 miles offshore, lies off the coast of Northumberland and stretches for 100 miles from Newcastle to the Scottish border. It is in fact a network of reefs which supports a rich diversity of sealife including large numbers of pink-white deeplet anemones and the plant-like bottle brush hydroid, as well as crabs, edible sea urchins, lobsters and fish such as the red and blue cuckoo wrasse, lumpsucker fish, pollock and ballan wrasse.

At the southernmost end of the great reef, offshore from the wind farm at Blyth, lies the Trink, a ridge of limestone partly covered by gravels, cobbles and some boulders, which has been found to support a number of rare species such as the sea spider. [back to panorama]

20. Wolf fish – fearsome looking but harmless!

The fearsome looking but totally harmless wolf-fish lurks in dark crevices in the rocky reef. It is a cold water species more typical of waters further towards the Arctic. In winter, the waters off North East England are some of the coldest in the UK. In February (the coldest month), the mean surface water temperature varies from 5.5 ºC to 6 ºC. [back to panorama]

21. Edible sea urchins

Edible sea urchins are found in this network of reefs which supports a rich diversity of sealife. [back to panorama]

22. Lobsters live in rocky crevices

Lobsters are part of a rich diversity of sealife supported by the network of reefs. Sea caves provide an important shelter where, if they escape being fished, lobsters can grow to a large size and live for up to 80 years.

23. Devonshire cup coral

Devonshire cup coral is so named because it was first discovered in British waters around Devon. It has an internal limestone skeleton shaped like a cup and up to 80 slender tentacles each ending in a white or brown knob. It can vary in colour and ranges from red, pink, orange, white and green to brown. The coral is up to 2.5cm across and is found underwater attached to stones and shells and in crevices down to depths of 200 metres. [back to panorama]

24. Chalk pillars off Flamborough, topped by kelp

Around Flamborough Head in Yorkshire, chalk and limestone reefs extend underwater for up to 6 km out to sea, with rich communities of seaweeds and invertebrate animals, many of which have not been recorded from other chalk shores in Britain. This, the biggest underwater chalk reef in Europe, has the unusual feature of underwater rock pillars, between which there are sandy stretches of seabed and clumps of reef-making worms.

On the sides of the pillars, a coating of small animals such as anemones, sponges, and starfish form a ‘living animal turf’. Lobsters scuttle about in crevices at the base of the pillars, and fish shelter between them. The higher chalk is bored into like honeycomb by millions of small animals including piddocks - shellfish which can luminesce, or glow in the dark. Green, red and brown seaweeds are abundant.

On top of the pillars there are waving kelp fronds - a single frond may have thousands of small red algae and animals living on it. [back to panorama]

25. Edible crab

Crabs and lobsters are found in areas where there is a harder, cobble or boulder strewn seabed. In the North East there is a major inshore fishery - for lobster, crabs and scampi in particular. [back to panorama]

26. Light bulb seasquirt and deeplet sea anemone

The transluscent light bulb sea squirt can be found in sea caves along with a host of anemones. [back to panorama]

27. Cuckoo wrasse

On the chalk reefs the brightly coloured, red and blue cuckoo wrasse, darts amongst the fronds of kelp which shelter a wide range of sealife. [back to panorama]

28. Ballan wrasse

On the chalk reefs ballan and cuckoo wrasse, brightly coloured fish, dart amongst the fronds of kelp which shelter a wide range of sealife. [back to panorama]

29. Rich communities of bottle brush hyrdroids, anemones, algae and corals cover chalk reefs

The bottle brush hydroid occurs in these chalk reefs. The near-shore rocks are studded with limpets, periwinkles and dog whelks amongst waving sea oak, a vivid green seaweed.

Larvae of hundreds of marine animals settle on the rocks of the Great North Eastern rocky reef and become sponges, sea squirts and dead men’s fingers, a soft coral. Dahlia and snakelock anemones live on rocks covered with bright pink algae. [back to panorama]

30. Leopard-spotted goby

The leopard-spotted goby is one of a wide variety of reef-dwelling fish which thrive in the North East sea caves. [back to panorama]