ONE of Britain's rarest insects has been found again after going missing on a beach littered with tonnes of debris and pollution from a grounded container ship.

There were concerns for the survival of the Scaly cricket after the deliberate grounding of the storm-damaged MSC Napoli off Sidmouth, on the East Devon Jurassic Coast, in January last year.

The 62,000-tonne vessel was grounded a mile offshore, but dozens of its containers and their contents ended up on the pebble beach at nearby Branscombe – one of only three sites in the UK where the cricket is found. Thousands of people flocked from across the country to Branscombe to take items from the containers, leaving the beach polluted with items including metals and plastics, which took months to clear.

The National Trust said today there had been fears for the cricket's survival after the grounding of the MSC Napoli and the effects of winter storms.

"Following the massive clean-up operation concerns were raised for the survival of this tiny cricket as a result of the debris from the stricken ship and bad weather," said the trust.

The cricket was rediscovered in a search by Adrian Colston, National Trust property manager for Dartmoor.

He said: "After walking along the shingle beach and drawing a blank I changed my tactics in the hunt for this elusive cricket.

"I set five pitfall traps at various points on the beach at Branscombe using cat biscuits, pieces of apple and a bit of my Cornish pasty as bait.

"When I returned I found that one of the traps contained a single adult female Scaly cricket," he said. "This rediscovery has come as a real relief and it is likely a healthy population of Scaly crickets can still be found on Branscombe beach.

"They are notoriously difficult to find and their location away from the main site of the Napoli activity certainly helped increase the likelihood that they would survive."

The Scaly cricket was first discovered on Branscombe Beach in 1998. The insect is nocturnal and lives on shingle beaches, feeding on general waste. Normally found in the Mediterranean, it measures 8-13mm and can live for up to three years.

As well as Branscombe beach the Scaly cricket is found on Chesil beach in Dorset and Marloe Sands in Pembrokeshire.