On the shady side of wet rocks.

So many different beaches; sandy, rocky, seaweedy, stony, steep, slippery, lumpy ... For this low tide day, I chose a smooth, flat, sandy one, for ease of walking. An unfortunate choice. The tide didn't go out far enough to reach the eelgrass beds, where little scuttling and sliding critters would find shelter. The sand reached to the edge of the water, and everything except sand dollars were already sheltering deep in the sand. And the sand dollars were hurrying, as fast as a sand dollar can hurry, to bury themselves.

But there were rocks. Good-sized rocks, mostly standing well apart; glacier droppings. Around each, the current has dug a shallow depression, and on the shaded side, it's business as usual, even at low tide. I went from rock to rock, checking out those tidepools.

From a few metres away, I could see movement; quick, darting dashes for cover; small fish startled perhaps by the vibration I was making in the sand, perhaps by my shadow. Crabs, maybe, heading for the deepest crevice under the rock. When I got to the edge of each pool, nothing was moving. I waited, sometimes, pretending to be another rock. The fish were more patient than I.

Seaweed doesn't hide. And anemones keep fishing as long as there's water.

Algae, red, green, brown. Turkish towel, sea lettuce, and Sargassum.

Burrowing anemones, green and palest pink. And one slow crab.

A salad bowl; Moon snail egg collar, with shredded sea lettuce and red, twiggy algae.

Two plumose anemones hanging from the rock. The water still covers their mouth, so they keep those tentacles spread open.

It's good to see healthy purple starfish again. More sea lettuce, red, bladed algae, and another green anemone.

A silvery plumose anemone, almost entirely out of water, tentacles retracted. Sea lettuce, and small, orange thingies; sponges?

Next: on/under the sand.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tantas playas, de tantos tipos distintos: arena, rocas, piedritas, algas marinas; resbalosas, firmes, inclinadas ... Para este dia de marea baja, escojí una playa arenosa, plana y firme, donde sería fácil de caminar. Una decisión desasertada. La marea no bajó suficientemente como para que alcanzara las areas donde crece la hierba Zostera, donde las criaturas activas pueden encontrar abrigo. Hasta la orilla, se extendió la arena, y todos los residentes, aparte de los dólares de arena, ya se habían escondido de la luz y el aire. Y esos dólares de arena se apuraban, tan rapidamente como un dólar de arena puede apurarse, para desaparecer también.

Pero hubo piedras. Piedras de buen tamaño, bien separadas; desechos de los glaciares. Alrededor, las corrientes han formado depresiones en la arena, y en la sombra, la vida sigue, aun a marea baja. Caminé de una a otra de estas rocas, examinando esas pozas de marea.

Desde una distancia de unos pocos metros, podía ver movimientos rápidos; pececitos tal vez asustados por la vibración de mis pasos, tal vez por mi sombra. O cangrejos, quizás, buscando la grieta más oscura bajo la roca. Cuando llegaba a la orilla de la poza, nada se movía. Esperé algunas veces, imitando la roca. Los peces demonstraban más paciencia que la que tenía yo.

Las algas marinas no se esconden. Y las anémonas siguen buscando alimento mientras haya agua.

1. Algas marinas roja, verde, marrón. Toalla turquesa, lechuga de mar (Ulva sp.), Sargassum multicum.
2. Anémonas Anthopleura artemisia, verdes y color de rosa pálida. Y un cangrejo sin apuros.
3. Ensalada mixta. Un collar de arena, que es una masa de huevos producido por el caracol luna. Con algas verdes (lechuga de mar, Ulva sp.) y ramitas de un alga roja.
4. Dos anémonas plumosas (Metridium senile) colgadas de una roca. Como el agua todavía les llega a la boca, siguen con los tentáculos abiertos.
5. ¡Que bueno es ver las estrellas de mar sanas ahora! Ulva sp., un alga roja, y otra anémona verde.
6. Otra anémona plumosa, esta con los tentáculos retraídos, ya que está fuera del agua. Las cosas anaranjadas pueden ser esponjas.

Para mañana: criaturas en la arena.

On a winter beach

The north end of Miracle Beach, where it joins the outlet of Black Creek, is mostly flat, fine sand and small, rounded stones, held down by seashore salt-grass, suited to the changeable water, now fresh as the creek washes the area, now salt as the tide covers it all. At low tide, there are the tufts of salt-grass to walk on, with shallow puddles between them, and, near the high tide line, a layer of shredded seaweeds, fresh and bright, deposited by the recent storms.

A large kelp crab. Dead, not a molt, but still very fresh.

Sieve kelp, Agarum clathratum.

This is a subtidal brown alga that grows to over a metre tall, blade and stipe. By the time it ends up on the upper beach, it comes in bits and pieces. This large section included a bit of the central rib.

Turkish towel, Chondracanthus exasperatus. Very faded already.

Another large, subtidal seaweed that turns up on the beach in shreds. Feels like a towel, they say, but it is not a fabric-softened towel fresh out of your dryer; more like the dish scrubber I use on pots and pans. Those little pointed projections are tough.

Gull and salt-grass, Distichlis spicata.

And these weren't strictly on the beach, but just offshore, diving for food in the shallow water.

Buffleheads, Bucephala albeola, three males and one more subdued female.

Buffleheads eat aquatic invertebrates that they find in the intertidal zone, such as crabs and snails, so they swim close to shore, taking short dives; where you saw them go down, they'll come up again. (Not like the loon, offshore, going down here, coming up a long time later, and far away.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

El extremo norte de Miracle Beach, donde se une al estuario de Black Creek, es una playa aplanada, de arenas finas y piedritas redondeadas, todo fijado en su lugar por las hierbas halófilas Distichlis spicata, adaptadas a la salinidad variable, ahora agua fresca cuando las cubre el rio, ahora en agua salada cuando sube la marea. A marea baja, se puede caminar allí, pisando los montoncitos de grama salada; alrededor, el agua llega a unos pocos centímetros de profundidad. En la zona más alta, hay una capa de algas marinas deshechas, arrancadas de sus sitios en el fondo y depositadas aquí por las tempestades de invierno.

Fotos:

1. Cangrejo de algas del norte, Pugettia producta. Muerto pero recientemente, totalmente entero.
2. Quelpo coladera, Agarum clathratum. Este es un alga que crece en la zona submareal. Llega a alcanzar más de un metro, contando el estipe y las frondas. Ya cuando llega a la playa, está desbaratada. Este pedazo grande llevaba algo de la espina central.
3. Toalla turca, Chondracanthus exasperatus, ya perdiendo su color rojo fuerte. Esta es otra alga submareal que llega a la playa hecha pedazos. Se siente como una toalla, dicen, pero no es una toalla suave, recién salida de tu secadora de ropa; más bien es como el estropajo con que limpio los sartenes. Esos puntitos son fuertes.
4. Una gaviota y la grama salada.
5. Y estos últimos no estaban exactamente en la playa, pero cerca. Los patos porrones coronados (aquí tres machos, y una hembra) comen animales invertebrados que viven en la zona intermareal, como por ejemplo, los cangrejos y los caracoles marinos. Nadan cerca de la playa, haciendo buceos cortos; donde los viste desaparecer, allí subirán a la superficie y muy pronto. (No como lo hacen los colimbos, que se sumergen lejos de la playa, y luego aparecen mucho más tarde y bien lejos, donde menos los esperas.)

Reds and browns

Miracle Beach is a busy summer beach. It's a wide, sandy, clean beach at low tide, in season sprinkled with happy kids, sand sculptors, and sleepy sunbathers. I went down in mid-winter, at high tide. There was no sand. All along the shore, up against the wet logs (it had been raining), were mounds of shredded algae.

On other beaches, winter high tides bring in tangles of long bull kelp and knots of eelgrass, ripped up by the roots, maybe some rockweed, and an occasional blade of Turkish towel. Here on the Miracle Beach shore, most of the algae were brown and red. A variety of kelps, but not one piece of bull kelp along the whole length of the beach. Many red algae; blades and threads and delicate feathery branches. Everywhere there was Turkish towel, new and old, from deep wine red (fresh) to magenta, to pink, then, sun-bleached, to pure white.

At the north end of the beach, more sea lettuce intermingled with the reds and browns. The gull is carrying a piece of dark brown seaweed.

Sugarwrack kelp, Saccharina latissima, with shreds of many others.

Besides the sugarwrack here, there is brown: a smooth-bladed kelp, a blade of eyelet silk, a stipe of something or other. Red: a handful of red spaghetti, a small branch of sea lace, a blade of something pink, and a fragment of Turkish towel. Green: the sea lettuce, and eelgrass.

A fragment of a winged kelp. With a few leaves of California rose, or something similar, sea lettuce, eelgrass, Turkish towel, and a smooth red blade, maybe iridescent seaweed.

Red eyelet silk, Sparlingia pertusa, bleached to brownish yellow. And a snail.

A very bleached blade of Turkish towel, showing the knobby papillae.

I brought home a small blade of Turkish towel, a clump of a small rockweed, and a handful of red spaghetti, Gracilaria sp., all of which I added to the aquarium. The kelp crab loved the red spaghetti:

It's good camouflage, almost matching his long legs.

No hiding place for a little hermit.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

La playa "Milagro", Miracle Beach, es una playa excelente para pasear un rato en el verano. Amplia, arenosa, limpia; siempre que la marea está baj, la playa está llena de niños jugando, escultores de figuras de arena, y gente soñolenta, tomando el sol. Pero yo fui a medio invierno, con la marea alta. No había arena. A todo lo largo de la playa, pilas y montones de algas marinas, rotas en pedacitos, cubrían el espacio entre el agua y los troncos caídos.

En otras playas, las altas mareas depositan nudos de hierba marina Zostera, y del kelp gigante, el de los tallos de muchos metros de largo, tal vez un poco del alga Fucus, y de vez en cuando un pedazo de toalla Turka. Aquí en la costa de Miracle Beach, casi todas las algas eran algas cafés o rojas. Había una gran variedad de alga "kelp", pero en toda la playa no vi ni un tallo del kelp gigante. De las algas rojas, había muchas diferentes, especialmente la toalla Turka por dondequiera, en todos sus colores, desde el rojo oscuro de la planta nueva, a magenta, color de rosa, y blanqueado hasta un blanco puro.

Las fotos; una gaviota con un pedazo de alga. Al extremo norte de la playa.

Una hoja de kelp "azucarada", con una variedad de pedacitos de otras algas.

Un trozo de kelp "alada".

Una lámina de lo que llaman ojete rojo. Es rojo cuando es nuevo, pero se vuelve amarillo con el tiempo. Siempre tiene esos agujeros.

Un pedazo blanqueado de toalla Turka, mostrando sus papilas.

Me traje a casa para el acuario, una rama de kelp azucarada, una plantita de Fucus, y un manojo de espagueti rojo. Al cangrejo kelp, le encantó este último: le sirve muy bien de camuflaje. Al ermitaño, no, pero como le gusta treparse a todo ... 

Chilly!

The weather is off-kilter. Up north, they're having a heat wave. In Bella Coola, where I used to live, it should be double digits below zero (Celsius). Instead, it's raining. It's raining in Alaska! There are large areas in the Yukon and Northwest Territories, up by the Arctic Circle, where the temperature is above zero, in spots in the double digits.

And here, in the mild South country, it's freezing hard. Minus 7 here in Campbell River, -8 (Celsius) in Vancouver this morning.*

I went for a walk on the beach, looking for birds. I found ice.

A scrap of Turkish towel seaweed, with ice crystals. Not snow. For some reason, the stones resist the cold while the seaweeds freeze.

I'll have more photos, and even a few chilly birds, tomorrow.

*The weather pundits say the trend is upward; we'll be seeing some of the ice melting next week.

They are what they eat

It's wet and rainy, and the days are dark. Our weather people tell us to expect 2 hours of sunshine tomorrow. Watery sunshine it will be, at best. My garden is mourning.

Down on the beach, the seaweeds we see all summer are gone, ripped up, dead, or in some sort of hibernation. This last visit, I found one shredded piece of sea lettuce, one rotting rockweed. But the high winter tides and the storms brought in large sheets of Turkish towel, and two different red algae, which I've planted in the aquarium.

And all my critters are eating red veggies, and turning pink, to match their new diet.

One of the red algae, growing on an old clamshell.

One of the little white-fleshed (normally) Nassa snails, between two different red munchies. Only his siphon retains the usual hint of cream.

One of the little orange hermits, now sporting pink and violet tones around the mouthparts.

The crabs refuse to eat that red stuff; they're still green and white. Or grey and black, in the case of the tiny black-clawed crabs.

Billions and billions

Boundary Bay was in a quiet mood when we dropped in a couple of days ago. The tide was partway out, and didn't seem to be either coming or going. Though the sunshine was bright, there was a chilly wind, and the beach was almost deserted. A couple of boats were tied high and dry on the sand. There were no paddle boarders, no dog walkers, barely even any birds. Sand, stones, seaweed, and water; that was all there was to see.

Looking back towards Burnaby. One wader.

It all depends on your perspective. That beach is crowded, almost to capacity. A few hundred people, a dozen dogs, some flocks of birds; what are they but a passing trick of the weather to the billions and billions of living creatures that call it home.

From our usual parking spot at the Beach Grove boat launch, we walked south, towards the US border. Underfoot, on the sand, snails and hermits were making tracks.

Popular resting spot.

The stones in this section, where the currents are not too strong, so that even the small pebbles don't roll around like they do on the White Rock beach, are all coated with barnacles. In more agitated waters,barnacle babies may settle on any surface, but they don't survive unless their new home stays put.

Sea lettuce, about two inches deep, so very green, a super-concentrated springtime yellow-green. In the background, barnacle-laden stones, and another boat launch, covered in green scum.

Near the border, a couple of old logs broke the monotony of sand and stones. A small city, divided into residential districts: on the outer surfaces, sea lettuce, barnacles and mussels; in the dark crevices, more mussels, dotted with tiny white barnacles, and teeming masses of hermits in mudsnail shells; underneath, where the water stays even at low tide, the mudsnails, tiny crabs, and amphipods.

Near the top of the larger log. Medium-sized barnacles, and polka-dotted blue mussels. The dots are tinier barnacles.

Smiling stump. The flash revealed a thick coating of critters in the rotted centre.

Back at the boat ramp, I sat on the clean cement to examine a nearby rock.

Small barnacles, tiny hermit crabs (3), 3 snails, patches of egg mass, species unidentified, a flatworm, and under and around it all tiny, pinhead barnacles. The babies that wouldn't survive rolling.

Another look at those hermits, barely visible peeking out of their little shells, periwinkle and nassa.

A flatworm. There were many on this rock. At the bottom, tar spot seaweed, and a green worm.

More tar spot seaweed, a flatworm family, and that two-toned worm. It's a green ribbon worm, Emplectonema gracile. It eats mainly barnacles.

About that tar spot seaweed. It is an encrusting phase of the pretty Turkish towel that I bring home for my hermit crabs to climb on. In this phase, it coats rocks, and looks like tar or black oil. In this stage it is producing spores. As a red blade, it produces gametes (sperm and eggs).

Mastocarpus papillatus is an interesting seaweed species with two distinct lifecycle phases.  It has a long-lived "tetrasporophyte" phase, which looks like a crust or dried tar spot on rocks, with colors ranging from reddish-brown to black.  Each year, a new "gametophyte" phase grows from the "tar spot", known in some areas as "Turkish washcloth". . . . The female plants are covered with papillae - short, bumpy or nipple-like outgrowths which are the sites of fertilization.  . . . The male gametophyte has no papillae, is yellowish to light pink or light rose, and has a thinner blade.  The spore producing tar spot phase of Mastocarpus papillatus is a slow growing, long lived perennial (one source estimates up to 90 years).  The female and male bladed gametophyte phase dies back every year leaving just the encrusting "tar spot".   . . .  It grows on rocks, it can undergo considerable desiccation, and can withstand high temperatures.

From Seaweed Industry Association.

 

Purple!

I've been working late, chasing a deadline. Good thing it's been raining; we haven't missed any beach time.

This is from a whole month ago, on Boundary Bay beach.

Turkish towel drying out on sand. Well past its sell-by date, and turning purple.

I'm yawning in between every two words.  Goodnight, all!

Wriggly hitchhiking pincushion

I brought home a few stalks of Turkish towel for my hermits, and this little critter came along for the ride.

Sea urchin, about 1 cm. across

In the aquarium, he burrowed into the sand quickly, but later he was out in the open riding this snail, and carrying pieces of shell and sand grains, possibly as camouflage. It would have worked better if he had ever stopped waving those spines about.

Tonight, cleaning the tank, I found him back on the Turkish towel. He dropped off onto my fingertip, and attempted to glue himself there. Adventurous little beastie!

Shopping in ankle-deep water

My hermit crabs love seaweed. The bushier, the taller, the more tangled, the better. They eat it, climb it to rest clinging precariously to a waving tip, socialize on it, survey their territory from high points in it (they're always so interested in everything!) and hide under it.

When the rain started, I had been planning an expedition to replenish their supply, but I didn't want to venture out in the weather. By yesterday, they were down to a couple of blades of rotting eelgrass. I had given them a piece of lettuce, which my aquarium books said they would like. The crabs nibbled at it some, but the hermits ignored it and climbed the eelgrass, taking turns for lack of space.

This morning, I finally dug out my rain jacket and warm pants and dressed for rain. And the sun came out! I hurried down to Boundary Bay while my good fortune lasted.

A perfect summer day. I discarded my jacket on a log. Looking south to Point Roberts.

The sea was empty; even the birds stayed on board parked boats. Two gulls here.

And a half dozen on this yellow cataraman.

It was a good afternoon for seaweeds. Perhaps the recent weather has ripped up more of the tide flats than usual. In the first few minutes, I'd collected all the sea lettuce I could handle, and several handfuls of excellent, fresh eelgrass, one plant with roots and all.

I was looking for a tiny piece of kelp; the crabs love it, but it rots quickly, so it becomes a treat for a day and then gets tossed. I found some, and brought home a chunk with bryozoans for added protein. And along the way, I found several varieties of branched red weed, green rockweed, three kinds of hairy red seaweed, a ribbon sea lettuce, Turkish towel, and a rubbery sheet of red algae. From a boat a man and a boy were trailering, I harvested a handful of fine green algae; good to freeze for the next rainy day. And there were umpteen oak leaves, maple leaves, and one geranium stalk, blown out to sea by the wind, brought back in on the tide. (I didn't bring any of these last items home; good for the garden, but coals to Newcastle and all that.)

Small leaf of big-leaf maple, tied neatly with brown eelgrass.

Faded Turkish towel, red algae, eelgrass live and dead,  and brilliant green sea lettuce.

A blade of well-aged kelp. Interesting patterns; I see in there an old flyer or postcard, much yellowed with age, with part of a face visible on the front.

Another view. The "postcard" has disappeared.

The fog settling down again, all the colours blue-shifted.

Back in the car, as I turned the first corner towards Tsawwassen, the rain started again.

Oh, and the critters approved of my "purchases".