Oh, those gribbles. So cute, but so hungry. A bit of the nibbled slipway came into the hands of Cat who used her USB microscope to study it: only to discover that it was still very much occupied!
It seems possible from the four spots on the rear end of this little chap that the species represented here is Limnoria quadripunctata Holthuis, 1949; but in the absence of any online gribble guide it's hard to be sure. Any gribble experts want to speculate? [Update: see comments below for elucidation]
UPDATE: The release of the gribble armada
After our brave little TV stars had managed to survive over 24 hours away from seawater they were starting to look a bit sluggish when asked to perform yet again under the lights this morning at work. The Ranger decided they needed to be given a fighting chance to go off and nibble some toff's yacht in Cowes. So down to the river Medina went the gribbles, wrapped in a magazine, and they were sent off in a little flotilla of wooden fragments.

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Posted on 15th October 2007 at 8 14 am
The thoughts and writings of The Virtual Ranger, since 1995 the host and mascot of Naturenet, the UK's most popular independent environmental website; along with interjections from his real-life alter ego, Matthew Chatfield, and others. Featuring not only Naturenet and countryside related stuff, but, as on Naturenet, plenty of other material - more or less at random - that takes The Ranger's fancy. But you can be confident that soon enough he'll be rather sarcastic.
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