An egg-cellent discovery

The third shark egg case hunt of the year landed an expected, but worthy reward for the team! With a collaborative effort from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust at Flamborough’ s Living Seas Centre we uncovered an egg case from the Small-eyed Ray – one of only 3 to be recorded along the Yorkshire coast! Classed as threatened by the IUCN, the Small-eyed Ray is more commonly found along the South and South-West coast of England.

It is known to be mostly absent from the North Sea, so the discovery of an egg case belonging to this species is a rare and important find. This information has been reported to The Sharks Trust and will be used to identify the potential for populations and nursery grounds along the Yorkshire Coast.

The Deep has been coordinating these events as part of Shark Trust’s ‘The Great Egg Case Hunt’ project for some time, teaming up with the Wildlife Trust at Flamborough and Spurn Point during 2017 to deliver additional activities for participants. Across the year, egg cases have been discovered at both locations, demonstrating that there are breeding populations of shark and ray along our local coastline.

All volunteers had a fantastic time and the events are becoming increasingly popular! But it’s not only egg cases that are uncovered; interesting items such as a Puffin breastbone, a Cormorant skull and several crabs were also examined. So, despite the low shark egg case count, there are lots of interesting items belonging to local wildlife to discover.

There will more egg case hunt events planned for 2018, details of these will be made available on the website soon.