August is the time for visits to the beach and the sea. On our sandy Lincolnshire shores we usually don’t see what’s living in the sea. It’s hard to imagine the diversity of wildlife that lives beneath the waves.

 

With a flattened body and both eyes on the same side of their head, flatfish such as plaice are adapted to living on sandy and muddy seabeds. The juvenile fish can be seen in the shallows before migrating to deeper waters. Plaice are a long-lived species with a maximum reported age of 50 years but, as with many species of fish, they are subject to high fishing pressure and won’t often live that long.