Warty yellow creature spotted for first time on UK coastline. See ‘exciting’ discovery

Jenny Mallinson was volunteering with the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, conducting a survey along the southern coast of England when she spotted something peculiar.

In the seawater near Southampton, she discovered a small, yellow wart-covered creature. It was a species of sea slug that had never been seen in the United Kingdom, the wildlife trust said in a Nov. 8 news release.

After discovering the “rare” Warty Doris slug, another volunteer with the program searched another nearby beach and found three more specimens, according to the trust. The four creatures indicate that the species lives within the Solent estuary on the southern coast of the U.K.

“Seven-tenths of our planet is seawater, with new species being discovered all the time,” Mallinson said in the release. “What is exciting is that simply by going to our local beach at low tide, we could all make such discoveries.”

The species “mainly lives under stones in the intertidal zone,” experts with the trust said. The creature is named after the “tubercle shaped warts all over its body.”

Warty Doris slugs are typically found in the Atlantic Ocean, Western Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, according to SeaLifeBase.

This story was originally published November 9, 2023 at 2:37 PM.

Moira Ritter

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Moira Ritter covers real-time news for McClatchy. She is a graduate of Georgetown University where she studied government, journalism and German. Previously, she reported for CNN Business.