The Walpole Bay tidal pool has now been drained as work for maintenance and repairs takes place.
Margate Town Deal funding is being used for repairs to the sluice gates and concrete steps and replacing the escape ladders. Surveys of the structure are also being carried out to inform future works.
The Thanet Coast Project and its volunteer Coastal Wardens visited the drained pool to identify and photograph some of the marine wildlife.
The team found a number of species, including:
Corkwing Wrasse
Lesser Pipefish
Five-bearded Rockling
Rock Goby
Various Crab species – Velvet swimming, hairy, long-clawed porcelain, lesser spider & shore crabs
Squat Lobsters
Chameleon Prawns
Starfish
Sea Oak and other seaweeds – including the invasive wireweed
Various Sponge species
Seasquirts
Dahlia and other anemones
Peacock worms – and others from Lugworm, Rock to Spiral worms
Various shellfish – from Limpets, Netted dogwhelks to Piddocks
The pool is four acres in size and is bigger than the two largest listed seawater lidos, Penzance and Lymington. It is 137m long and 2.13m deep at the seaward end.
Marine life that can be found in the pool includes lobster in berry (eggs), britlestars, shannys, sea urchins, shore crabs, spider crabs, gobies, peacock worms, sponges of all sorts of colours, white looking long-clawed porcelain crabs, spider crabs, eels. bootlace worm….and many more!
Walpole Bay Tidal Pool is listed at Grade II by Historic England.
The pool was officially declared open at 3.30pm, June 25, 1937. It is one of two tidal pools constructed in Margate at the same date, the other nearby at Marine Terrace, on Margate Main Sands.
It was constructed to make it possible for large numbers of people to bathe in the sea at all states of the tides because the beaches at Margate and Cliftonville sloped gradually, and there was a considerable tidal range so that the low water mark could be as far as 300 yards from the promenade.
The pool will reopen when the work is completed.
