A WOMAN said she had to do a double take when she spotted a sea creature on a pavement about 100 metres from the beach.

Jo Goodman was walking down Brunswick Terrace in Hove on Friday when she came across a species of ray at the bottom of Waterloo Street.

She said: “I was surprised. I had to double-back on myself to check what I saw.

“It was fairly small, about the size of an outstretched hand.”

Ms Goodman shared a photo of the creature on Facebook and wrote: “I saw it outside Brunswick Terrace. It wasn’t that stormy last night, surely?”

People on Facebook were divided on what the creature was and how it came to be on a street on the other side of the A259 seafront road.

One person wrote: "Looks like a seagulls had a go... Maybe they tag-teamed bringing it up from the beach?"

Another joked that the creature looked like a "Pokemon" and that it was "out of plaice", while many people expressed sadness that the ray had ended up on the pavement. 

Ella Garrud, living seas officer at the Sussex Wildlife Trust, identified the creature as an undulate ray, which is listed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species.

She said: “My guess is it was picked up by a bird and dropped, which is how it potentially got so far inland.”