Bringing the North Sea’s mysterious Sabellaria spinulosa reef to life through art

Author: Jack Digman, Lead Adviser, Marine and Lincolnshire Coast Team

The Wash is the largest embayment in the UK, housing a huge array of coastal and marine life across the East coast. However, what many don’t realise is that it holds a hidden gem.

Sabellaria spinulosa, commonly known as the ross worm, proliferates on this stretch of the coast like nowhere else in the UK, so much so that it forms a unique reef structure.

Reefs can be either of biogenic (produced by living organisms) or geogenic (geological formed – historic) origin. They are rigid compact structures rising from the sea floor on sediment, substrate, or rock that they can attach to. Sabellaria spinulosa forms a biogenic reef structure through secreting sand or shell fragments which create columns and tubes.

Everyone has heard of the Great Barrier Reef, and many locals may be aware of the Cromer Shoal Chalk Beds in Norfolk, but few are familiar with the equally amazing wonders this worm reef holds along the Norfolk and Lincolnshire coast.

This isn’t a rare worm, but the species is generally found individually, which makes this site even more special. The favourable conditions of The Wash have allowed it to thrive in high numbers to form expanses of reef. To date, The Wash and its surrounding waters are one of a handful of sites known to house fully developed and stable ross worm reefs in the UK.

As such it is important to get people talking about it to make sure it remains protected.

What is Sabellaria spinulosa and how can we get people excited about it?

The ‘ross worm’, Sabellaria spinulosa, is a sedentary, epifaunal polychaete. To translate that into non-scientific terms, it is a worm that doesn’t move a great deal and lives attached to surfaces such as the sea floor.

To some that may not sound very exciting so that’s where our work in marine visualisation comes in to change people’s minds.

Our marine visualisation work in the team really drills into one of Natural England’s core aims to connect people with nature. We aim to instil a greater sense of value for our marine environment through engaging and creative means.

In the past, we have created illustrations for better known habitats such as saltmarsh and have created displays in the Sheringham Museum and Leisure Centre in Norfolk to bring the Cromer Shoal chalk Beds to life.

However, this time we wanted to bring a habitat few have heard of or seen, to life - the Sabellaria spinulosa reefs of The Lincolnshire Wash and North Norfolk.

To do this we got the professionals in. Through illustration from the incredibly talented Janavi Kramer at Below and Beyond Art , we believe we have depicted the diverse activities of this unknown and unusual landscape.

Is this authentic representation of our seas?

To connect people with nature effectively through art you have to be engaging but true to the landscape.

If you look at this artistic image and compare it to the brown North Sea we usually look out to, you may be surprised to see how much life exists below the surface. Throughout the process of working with the artist, we strove to provide the most accurate representation of the landscape, while ensuring we delivered an engaging piece.

When we worked with Below and Beyond Art, we provided them with a pack of information. This included species lists for these habitats, including the crabs and bivalves you see in the final product.

This was derived from our own commissioned surveys of the reef.

We also provided our artist with a huge array of images taken from our sea floor surveys, undertaken by partners Cefas and JNCC?(as seen in the image below). These were from our local sites at The Wash and North Norfolk Coast, Inner Dowsing, Race Bank and North Ridge and Haisborough, Hammond and Winterton Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), meaning they were accurate and representative of the habitat we wanted to bring to life through illustration.

What’s next?

We have lots of ideas for showing off this amazing piece of art. Through our outreach work, we hope to inspire as many people as we can locally, nationally, and even internationally, to value the Sabellaria spinulosa reef.

Already we have shared this work across our local social media Twitter channels in Norfolk, Suffolk, and the East Midlands, hoping to bring attention to this wonderful species and give the artwork the credit it deserves.

In addition, we have had the piece printed off into posters that we can use at events and in schools. A couple of local schools have already taken interest locally and colleagues in Cumbria have requested some copies to use there, showing progress towards our national awareness goals.

Plans are also underway to make this piece into permanent signage at one of our protected sites along the coast.

In addition, we hope to use and learn from this work to create more amazing illustrations of lesser-known habitats. Works for coastal lagoons and vegetated shingle habitats are with two new local artists, so watch this space!