Intertidal Rock

Rocky intertidal represents around 48% of the total Scottish coast. This includes habitats of bedrock, boulders and cobbles and is affected by numerous physical variables including wave exposure, salinity, temperature and tides. Wave exposure is most commonly used to characterise intertidal rocky communities. This ranges from extremely exposed as found on some of the remote islands such as Rockall and St Kilda and the Atlantic facing coasts of the Western and Northern Isles as well as parts of the mainland, to extremely sheltered, typical of the upper reaches of many of the west coast sea lochs and Shetland voes. Large stretches of the west coast and Northern Isles are predominantly rocky whereas on the east coast it is much more patchy and interspersed by large stretches of sandy and muddy coastline.