Tens of thousands of dead starfish have been found stranded on a beach in Wales.
The rare phenomenon was described by a photographer who spotted them as a sad sight.
Giles Davies, an amateur nature photographer, told the BBC he photographed thousands of the stranded sea creatures on Coppet Hall Beach in Pembrokeshire.
He said: "I have never seen something like this before.
"It's really sad to just see that in nature, because you're looking at deaths in the thousands of one species."
Mr Davies added: "It's the sheer volume, you're always going to get winter tides where stuff will come ashore.
"For that volume to come ashore, no, something seriously has gone wrong with nature," he said.
The Marine Conservation Society said extreme weather is usually the likely cause of such incidents.
A spokesman for the organisation said: "We regularly see mass strandings of seabed-dwelling animals after storms, usually in winter, sometimes several times in a year."
And The Natural History Museum say that although a starfish stranding is an upsetting sight, it is 'not a cause for huge concern'.
They added that the population of the creatures regenerates itself quickly.
Dr Chris Mah, a starfish researcher from the Smithsonian Institution, in the USA agrees.
He said: "In almost every instance that this has been reported, there have been reports of either storms or high winds.
"Bear in mind that storms don't just mean high winds and rough water current. It also means fresh water input.
"Echinoderms are notoriously intolerant of freshwater. Low salinity water might serve to weaken or otherwise just disable enough of them to be washed ashore."
He added that starfish populations will usually bounce back.
Dr Mah said: "Although it seems like hundreds to thousands of individuals, bear in mind that many of these species occur over a huge area and their spawn includes hundreds of millions of individuals."
