Treasures of the rock pool

Text 1: Among the Rock Pools, by Rev. Edmund Gale

An original essay written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

Let any reader who believes the seashore to be a dull place kneel for half an hour beside a rock pool at low water, and he will rise a wiser man. In a basin no larger than a washstand I have counted a dozen anemones, red as cherries, which close at a touch of the finger; a shrimp so transparent that one sees its little heart at work; and a crab which raised its claws at me with all the dignity of a prize fighter.

My nephews, who came with me last summer expecting nothing, could not be dragged away from the rocks. They lay upon their stomachs with their noses an inch from the water and quarrelled over the name of every creature they found.

Yet I must add a word of warning. Since it became the fashion to keep an aquarium in the parlour, ladies and gentlemen have descended upon our coasts with hammers and baskets and carried off whole pools of living things, most of which are dead within a month. I have seen rocks near this town stripped as bare as a plate. The shore will not forgive us for ever.

Text 2: What We Found at Low Tide, by Freya Mortlake

An original contemporary blog.

If you think the beach is just sand and sandwiches, try lying on a rock at low tide and staring into a pool for twenty minutes. Last Sunday I took my two kids to a rock pool ramble run by the local wildlife trust, and in one pool the size of a kitchen sink we found beadlet anemones like blobs of red jelly, a blenny that kept peering at us from under a ledge, and a shore crab that waved its pincers at my son as if challenging him to a fight.

The children, who had complained all the way in the car, refused to leave. They knelt in the wet with their faces almost touching the water, arguing about whether a periwinkle counts as an animal.

The ramble leader did have a serious message, though. Every pool we looked at had something in it that should not have been there: a crisp packet, a tangle of fishing line, tiny beads of plastic among the shells. She told us to put every creature back exactly where we found it and take every bit of rubbish home. These pools have managed perfectly well without us for thousands of years, she said. It is only lately that they have needed protecting from us.

Both writers describe exploring rock pools on the seashore.

What are the similarities between the writers’ experiences and ideas about the rock pools?

Draw on evidence from both texts to support your answer.