Stoke Point Grounds
Lat/long
50 17.51N 50 17.51N	04 00.55W 04 02.33W
50 16.40N 50 16.40N	04 00.55W 04 02.41W

Location description (1957)

Stoke Point Grounds. Western boundary, Blackstone Point; eastern boundary, Revelstoke Church Cove; seaward extension, about 1-3 miles. The ground shelves very regularly outside the 10 fm. line; inside this line it is very uneven; maximum depth, 22 fm. In their general features these grounds present much similarity to the Mewstone grounds, but they offer rather greater diversity of type within a given area; and perhaps partly as a result of this and also of the fact that they are exposed to the full sweep of the Channel tide, the fauna is considerably richer than it is on the Mewstone grounds. The friable red rock characteristic of the Mewstone Ledge is met with again, and forms numerous more or less detached reefs, off Stoke Point. It is abundantly perforated by Pholadidea, and in disused crypts of this mollusc Thalassema neptuni and the remarkable ophiurid Ophiopsila aranea are frequent. As at the Mewstone, the surface of the rock is very clean, and it affords attachment to Tethya, Eunicella, Nemertesia, Thecocarpus, Alcyonium, Caryophyllia, Alcyonidium, etc. Between the reefs of red rock are patches of very rich shell gravel and sand. The grounds include an eastward extension of the Mewstone Echinoderm Ground, together with patches where Ophiothrix and Ophiocomina are abundant.

Updated information

No updated information

Species List

>Atrina fragilis Bathynectes longipes Crossaster papposus Eunicella verrucosa Henricia oculata Hero formosa Ophiura albida