Colours under rocks

What a difference a few metres make! I've been on this beach (Willow Point), flipping rocks at low tide before, but this time, the tide was the lowest I've seen it. The last time, I saw crabs and small snails and hermit crabs and barnacles. Not much else. This time, every rock had a diverse community on the underside.

Wosnesenski's isopods, multi-coloured snails, limpets, a tiny, tiny clam, barnacles, spiral tube worms, unidentified eggs, and a possible red chiton.

I was chasing Wosnesenski's isopods; they're big and visible, but very fast, very motivated to get back underneath a stone. None of them stop to challenge me, like a shore crab will.

"I'm going to pinch you and crunch your shell! No matter how big you are!"

(Aside: what's that weird thing under the clamshell on the upper left?)

Wosnesenski's isopod (Pentidotea wosnesenskii) stubby isopod (Gnorinmosphaeroma oregonensis -the name is longer than the beastie), and red chiton.

This isopod ran away, as they do, but exposed a stubby isopod and a red blob, which the camera saw better than I did. Stubby isopods are small, at most 1 cm long, usually less.

Stubbies. I think there are two of them, stacked. Two flatworms and their eggs, a barnacle, and a small, red chiton.

Chitons are fairly common in the lower intertidal zone. So far, I've seen the giant Pacific chiton (up to 14 inches; the ones I've seen were between 5 and 6 inches long), the beautiful red-lined chiton, the woody (to 8 cm), the mossy (10 cm), and some hairy species, so buried under their overgrowth of algae that they were unidentifiable. But I hadn't seen one so small, and so red. I don't know the species; none of the 30 species in my encyclopedia seem to match.

A more usual find; a woody chiton, still very small.