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Natural Heritage

Click here for a list and photos of flora. Can you find them?

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The Coastline of St. John's Point

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St John’s Point is a long finger of Carboniferous limestone that sticks out 12km from Dunkineely into Donegal bay, in the Atlantic Ocean.

 

The rock was formed 350 million years ago when Ireland lay beneath a shallow tropical sea close to the Equator. The entire site is within an SAC (Special Area of Conservation) and proposed NHA (National Heritage Area).


Several type specimens of brachiopod, coral and crinoid species are held in the National
Museum of Ireland Griffith Collection. It is a haven for wildlife, birds and dolphins, seals, porpoises and even basking sharks showing up regularly to feed on the many smaller schools of fish.

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Trabane Beach

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(Trá Bán – White Beach) is unusual; the sand is course and sometimes referred to as coral sand or maërl.

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In fact, it has nothing to do with coral at all; it is composed of fragments of calcareous algae known as Coralline Red Algae which grows offshore. Coralline Red Algae tends to grow in areas where the underlying rock is composed of limestone.

 

There are about six species of coralline algae that form maërl in Ireland but most of the beds are made up of just two species; Phymatolithon purpureum and Lithothamnion corallioides. Over 500,000 tonnes of this material is collected annually in Brittany, to produce a horticultural top dressing.

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The porous structure of maërl makes it a particularly good filtration agent for the purification of drinking water and for filtration systems in aquaria.

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Limestone Paving

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Limestone Paving, the result of erosion by rain, which is naturally acidic, falling into cracks, eating away at the alkaline rock forming grykes, offering an environment for flora to thrive. The blocks are known as clints.

 

Click here for a list and photos of flora. Can you find them?

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Fossils

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Fossils, a window into the past. Have you found any yet? There are many to be found on the shores surrounding St John’s Point. St John’s Point is a nationally important fossil locality due to the quality of its exposure and faunal content. 

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Marsh Fritillary Butterfly

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There is a colony of the E.U. Habitats Directive Annex II and red-listed Marsh Fritillary butterfly on the peninsula. Its foodplant, Devil’s-bit Scabious (Succisa pratensis), is common in the grass and heath vegetation and the colony present there is one of the best documented in Donegal.

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Picture by Iain Leach.

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For more information go to â€‹https://www.ipcc.ie/a-to-z-peatlands/marsh-fritillary-butterfly/

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Diving

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Known amongst divers as Europe’s answer to the Great Barrier Reef offering a sheer face down to 30m in clear waters with an abundant fish-life and colourful anemones, kelp forest and small ship wreck.

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