MORECAMBE Bay is home to a secret deep-sea pit full of a wide variety of unusual creatures, says a publicly funded conservation group.

Lying in the entrance to the Bay, between Barrow and Fleetwood, lies the little-known Lune Deep.

Long and thin, a glacier formed the 85 metre deep pit, oriented SW to NE, during the last ice age. The feature is said to be unique around the English coast.

Lune Deep is home to animals such as burrowing anemones, the peacock worm, tiny marine creatures called hydroids and bryozoa. And larger fish such as spurdog, giant dogfish and migrating salmon pass through the pit.

Natural England are hoping to raise public awareness to such unusual features that lie off our shores after research showed less than one per cent of the population can name an underwater feature of the English seas. Also, only 9.3 per cent of people living in the North West believe the seas have a variety of landscapes – some unique to the region.