The cliffs at Warren Point are maintained, managed and owned by the National Trust for access and Nature conservation. Grazing animals including the Dartmoor Pony, keep areas of grassland open and provide a haven for wildflowers, insects and butterflies. The landscape of scrub, woodland and open grassland are important habitats and the area forms part of the Plymouth Shores and Cliffs Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Beneath the water, towards the mouth of the estuary, are large seagrass beds. These submarine meadows are hugely important for wildlife and support an immensely rich but sensitive community. Fish and other sealife lay their eggs within the seagrass. Once those eggs hatch the young fish can hide from predators in the jungle of leaves. Seagrass beds are also a favourite haunt of the seahorse, and of its close cousin the pipefish. Many shellfish and crabs also shelter here. Some such as the stalked jellyfish attach to the seagrass, capturing prey with stinging cells in their tentacles.

Curlew and oystercatchers can be found searching the estuary’s rich mudflats for worms, shellfish and shrimp, while kingfishers and little egrets can be seen fishing in the waters nearby. There are seaweeds of all shapes and sizes, sheltering creatures like crabs and many kinds of shellfish, such as cockle, shrimp, razor shell, and the elegant peppery furrow shell. There are even the descendants of farmed Pacific oysters escaped and gone wild. The estuary is a nursery for sea bass, and beneath the waterline are gardens of sea squirts and sponges, including the vividly named orange peel sponge and breadcrumb sponge.

Looking down onto the estuary from Warren Point, you can see the harbour basin, known locally as the Pool. Noss Mayo and Newton Ferrers are around to the left, on the far side of the water. Both settlements probably started life as so-called ‘cellars’ where the local farmers-cum-fishermen stored their nets. There was a fish market at Noss Mayo as far back as the 13th century and commercial fishing continued here into the 1960s.

Oysters have been farmed here since at least Norman, and possibly even Roman, times and continues to this day. If you visit the information point at Warren Point, you will see a House, just behind you, which once stored the Yealm Coast Guard life saving apparatus. If a boat was in distress, the horse-drawn equipment was dispatched. The Coast Guard fired rockets onto the boat with a line attached. Survivors were then pulled ashore in a ‘breeches buoy’ – a round life ring with canvas trousers (breeches) fixed to the bottom, attached to a line and pulley.

Life saving apparatus drill 1940. Every coastguard station was fitted with lifesaving apparatus. They were manned by local volunteers, most of whom were farmers and fishermen from the nearest village.