On very low tides, parts of the shingle, sand and mud exposed at Loch Kirkaig (NC0719) extend westward for over half a kilometre. This sheltered bay, at the mouth of the River Kirkaig, on the southern boundary of Assynt, was the site for the last field meeting of the Club’s Summer Programme, on Sunday 21st September 2025.
The meeting was to have been led by Ian and Gwen, but they had to go to Inverness that morning, so Andy Summers kindly stepped into the breach. They managed to get back for the second half of the meeting, which was enjoyed by some ten members and visitors (photos 1-3).
The account that follows is based on observations made both on the Sunday and a reconnaissance visit by Ian and Gwen on the preceding Thursday (photo 4), together with material collected for later examination, mainly from extensive areas of washed-up kelp and wrack.
Brown seaweeds
Wracks
Attached to stones and boulders in the intertidal area were all of the five wracks found commonly on local shores, listed here from high tide level downwards: channel Pelvetia canaliculata, spiral Fucus spiralis, bladder Fucus vesiculosus, egg Ascophyllum nodosum and serrated Fucus serratus. Channel wrack is the least common at this site owing to a lack of suitable substrates, except along the northern side of the bay. Egg wrack, however, dominates much of the intertidal area (photo 5). Further details of these wracks may be found in the article Exploring Quinag: the shore at Torgawn.
At the southern end of the beach, alongside the course of the River Kirkaig, there were extensive beds of horned or estuarine wrack Fucus ceranoides, which inhabits areas flushed by freshwater (photo 6). At this time of year, this species bears attractive forked reproductive bodies or conceptacles (photo 7). Some of it was densely covered with what appeared to be the fruiting bodies of a marine fungus (photo 8), which we have not seen before. Bruce Ing has identified it a widespread marine fungus Stigmidium ascophylli, although he said that is ‘rarely as robust’ as this.
Kelps
A conspicuous part of the washed-up banks of seaweed along the high tide line were larger brown seaweeds known as kelps, which live below the intertidal area and had been ripped up in recent westerly gales. Commonest were the branching fronds of cuvie Laminaria hyperborea, with rough oval stems that do not readily snap (photo 9).
Many of these fronds were covered with large blisters (photo 10), which are not mentioned in the most recent, very good, reference book on this group (Seaweeds of Britain and Ireland by Francis Bunker et al., published by Seasearch in 2012 – photo 11); they may be reproductive structures. Interestingly, we did not see any examples of cuvie’s close relative tangle L. digitata, although it grows elsewhere on the Assynt coastline.
There were also long wavy fronds of sugar kelp Saccarhina latissima (photo 12). Some of their branching holdfasts were attached to stones, others had been invested in bottom deposits composed largely of the small nodules of a calcareous red seaweed, maerl Phymatolithon calcareum, which we had not previously come across locally (photo 13).
The most striking of the kelps were splendid plants of furbelows Saccorhiza polyschides, whose strap-like stipes with wavy-curled margins and large warty bases are instantly recognizable (photos 14-15).
Other brown seaweeds
Further obvious browns in the banks of wash-up included the tough, spiky branches of the quirkily-named landladies’ wig Desmarestia aculeata (photo 16). Most of these were covered with fuzzy balls of one of what are known as thin filamentous browns (photo 17), beautiful under a microscope, but well beyond our capabilities to identify.
Another was a single large frond (30cm long) of what we took at first to be a red seaweed (photo 18, left), later identified as broad leaf weed Petalonia fascia. We had not noted this before and NBN has no records from the Assynt coast (which appears to be terra incognita for seaweeds).
Red seaweeds
Our go-to reference book (see above) states that ‘red seaweeds are the oldest known seaweed group on earth, with recognisable red algae preserved in the fossil record 1.2 billion years ago…[now with] up to 7000 species worldwide and over 350 species around Britain, Ireland and the Channel Isles’.
Many are microscopic, which means that the group is a lifetime’s study in its own right. We have floated out in water and photographed just a few of those found at Loch Kirkaig to which we could put names. Although common, they are undeniably beautiful when looked at in this way, and would be even more so seen underwater.
Those pictured are a single large (30cm) frond of red rags Dilsea carnosa (photo 18, right), beautiful fan weed Callophyllis laciniata (photo 19) and cock’s comb or red comb weed Plocamium calcareum (photos 20-21). Others noted were banded pincer weed Ceramiun rubrum agg., Irish Moss Chondrus crispus, siphon weed Polysiphonia lanosa on egg wrack, and more that we could not name.
Animal life
Molluscs
Sea shells are the most obvious signs of animal life in Loch Kirkaig, with the most robust, such as those of common cockles Cerastoderma edule, common mussels Mytilus edulis and common limpets Patella vulgaris, strewn across the intertidal area and piled up above high tide level.
We have photographed a small sample of the worn shells of some less common species (photo 22). They are, from the top down, left to right: pod razor Ensis siliqua (21cm long), pullet carpet Venerupis senegalensis, left and right examples of smooth artemis Dosinia lupinus, sand gaper Mya arenaria and turban topshell Gibbula majus.
This is the best beach in Assynt for pod razors and sand gapers. The former were known locally as ‘spoots’, dug in season at this site and eaten, according to Alec Dickson. The turban top shell is also of interest since, although it is a rather battered specimen, we have never before come across it in local beachcombing, and there are no records from the Assynt coast on NBN (which appears to be the general case).
Other invertebrates
We have hardly begun to scratch the surface of the diversity of intertidal and subtidal animal life in a site as rich as Loch Kirkaig, since this would be, again, a lifetime’s study. Many of the invertebrates belong to animal phyla which are either largely or exclusively marine.
Examples are hydroids or sea firs (class Hydrozoa of the phylum Cnidaria, which also includes jellyfish, corals and sea anemones). They are colonial, with tentacled feeding polyps interspersed with vase-shaped reproductive structures.
An obvious example in the wash-up was what looked like tufts of pale, brown hair, usually attached to cuvie stipes. Under a microscope these resolved themselves into the skeletal remains of a hydroid Amphisbetia operculata (photo 23).
The small, calcareous, coiled shells of tube worms Spirorbis spirorbis, often found on serrated wrack (photo 24), were an example of another such group, the bristle worms or polychaetes. This group was also represented by the sandy tubes of the sand mason Lanice conchilega.
Finally, we came across two examples of bryozoans or moss animals (phylum Bryozoa), colonial filter-feeding organisms, that are almost exclusively marine. On fronds of cuvie were the familiar extensive colonies of sea mat Membranacea membranipora. Hollows in the fronds of sugar kelp contained more discrete colonies of another bryozoan, Celleporella hyalina (photo 25), yet another organism that is not mapped for the Assynt coast on NBN.
Vertebrates
A fair range of birds were logged by those present, including buzzard, curlew, common gull, greater black-backed gull, herring gull, gannet, grey heron, hooded crow, red-breasted merganser (with young), shag and a white-tailed eagle.
On the previous Thursday, we had spotted a large duck/goose a fair way out on the Loch. Gwen got a couple of pictures (photos 26-27), which with Andy’s help resolved it as an immature pink-footed goose. Skeins had been flying over Assynt since at least 14th September, but this one seemed to have become detached from the rest of its flock.
Two visitors from Kings Lynn staying in Inverkirkaig also told us of their earlier sighting of an otter in the shallows of the loch. It had caught what they thought was a small salmon, and was tossing it in the air. From the size, it may have been a grilse on its return from the sea.
Relic of a former sea-bed
Beach cobbles at Inverkirkaig contain examples of most of the rock types found in Assynt, conveyed there by the ice sheets that once ground their way across this landscape. Amongst them was a good specimen of Lower Cambrian Pipe Rock (photo 28). This outcrops in the eastern part of the parish and contains trace fossils of the burrows of suspension-feeding worm-like organisms, Skolithos, which inhabited soft sea-bed sediments some 540-500 million years ago. A blast from the past!
Ian M. Evans and Gwen Richards