Mermaid's Purse

It is fairly common to find Mermaid's purses washed up on the beaches of the Cumbria Coast. They are the egg cases of the Lesser Spotted Dogfish Scyliorhinus canicula, This is one of three I found tangled together on the sand flats just South of Silloth on a wet walk with Debbie and Graham, so I put them in my pocket, thinking that they were all empty and the individual babies hatched out. However, when I looked closely, holding them up to the light, I could see the darkest one was full of baby dogfish, lying inside the case in its own tiny sea pool, a salty abandoned womb. Huge black oval eye marks and a definite dog fish shape so I wonder how soon it would have been before it hatched? I wanted to photograph it, but of course could not find my camera anywhere, and after a couple of days on the kitchen draining board there was a definite sea odour pervading the house. This picture therefore is a scanned photocopy (glad it didn't burst!) You can just about see the outline of something inside. On the outside is pretty baby barnacle. All sadly dogged with bad luck as they now are transforming into garden fertiliser.