Sorry about that.

I stepped on and broke several sand dollars yesterday. I'm sorry. I was in a hurry and not paying attention.

I was not planning on stopping at the beach, but on my way home I saw that the tide was 'way out, and the sand flats were empty and inviting. Couldn't resist.

The sand was clean, almost dry, and filled the bay. I walked out towards the water's edge; first stop, to see if the tide was coming or going. At first, the sand was smooth and bare. Everything living there, worms and clams and snails, was hiding underground, away from the deadly sunshine. Groups of eelgrass, mixed with a few seaweeds, lay flat on the sand.

But what was this? Most of the eelgrass lay with the tips pointing shorewards. But why? The last water they were in was rushing in the opposite direction. Shouldn't the plants have been swept seawards?

Explain this. I can't.

Half of the eelgrass here is laid down in the "proper" direction.

I stopped to look at a few more patches of eelgrass; most pointed shorewards. But I was wasting time; the tide might be coming in. I hurried, then, down towards the water's edge to see. And forgot to watch my feet until I felt the crunch of a broken, now dying sand dollar.

Look down!

How many sand dollars?

Live sand dollars hide at low tide just under the surface of the sand. They're fragile critters; step on one, and the test (shell) shatters.

Sand dollar community, detail. One sand dollar visible.

So I tiptoed out of the area, quite a large patch, and no matter how careful I was, I couldn't help smashing a few more animals. So sorry!

And then the tide was coming in, fast, and I had to hurry back to shore.

Old clamshell. Step on this without a pang. But check first, in case there's a crab hiding underneath.

Giant Pacific chiton, near the high-tide line. This one was dead already.

The tide rushed in. Before I got to the rocks of the breakwater, the sand was covered.

Good thing I hurried!

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

Ayer pisé y machuqué varias galletas de mar (dólares de arena). Lo siento. Tenía prisa y no me fijaba donde caminaba.

No tenía planes de ir a la playa, pero camino a casa vi que la marea estaba muy baja, y la playa arenosa esperaba, ancha, vacía. No pude resistir.

La arena estaba limpia y casi seca, y llenaba toda la bahía. Me dirigí hacia la orilla del agua; el primer objectivo para ver si la marea iba o venía. Al principio, la arena estaba muy lisa, sin objetos. Todo lo que vive aquí se escondía bajo la arena, para escapar la luz solar, tan peligrosa. Grupos de la hierba de mar, Zostera marina, estaban aplastados sobre la arena.

Pero, ¿qué pasaba aquí? La mayoría de la hierba se había quedado con las puntas de la planta apuntando hacia la playa. ¿Pero, porqué? Lo último que habían visto del agua, esta corría en dirección opuesta. ¿No deberían haberse inclinados hacia el mar?

1. Hierba de mar, apuntando hacia la playa. Una flecha con dos cabezas: hacia la playa, y hacia el agua.
2. La mitad de esta hierba se inclina en la dirección que se supone sería inevitable.
3. Me detuve para examinar otros grupos de hierba; la mayoría apuntaba hacia la playa. Pero se me iba el tiempo y la marea podría estar avanzando ya. Me apuré, entonces, hacia la orilla para ver cuanto tiempo me quedaba. Y se me olvidó fijarme donde pisaba hasta que sentí que algo se quebraba bajo mi pie. Una galleta de mar, ahora una galleta de mar moribunda. ¡Fíjate donde pisas, mujer!
   
   ¿Cuántas galletas de mar hay aquí?
4. Las galletas de mar vivas se esconden apenas bajo la  superficie de la arena. Son frágiles; si pisas una, se fragmenta su esqueleto.
5. Comunidad de galletas de mar, detalle. Con una visible.
6. Concha vieja de almeja. Pisa esta sin problemas. Pero mejor, primero asegúrate que no esconde un cangrejo refugiándose del sol.
7. Quitón bota de goma, Cryptochiton stelleri, cerca de la playa. Muerta.
8. Y la marea subía rapidamente. Antes de que llegara a las rocas del rompeolas, ya estaba cubierta la arena.

Brown's Bay in late October

 I first discovered Brown's Bay in 2016, over 7 years ago, and I've been back many times since then. I drove down again this Monday, and the old familiar sights were all somehow different. I'd never been there in late fall, I realized. I came home and checked all my old photos; I've been visiting from January to September, never later in the year.

It was quiet. The restaurant had closed for the season the night before. A door was open, but there was no sign of people; chairs still sat on the deck, but the umbrellas were closed. The baskets of flowers were gone; so were all but two of the old swallows' nests, empty now. Most of the moorings along the docks were vacant. Up on the hill, a couple of people were packing up their RVs, ready to head south.

Empty boat moorings, rusty pilings.

Oh, but there were gulls, flocks of them, mostly out on the bouncy water beyond the docks. And a big sea lion that came to look me over until I'd unlimbered the camera. Out in the channel, a chilly wind ruffled the water; in the distance, along the further shore, I could see the whitecaps racing south as they headed towards Seymour Narrows. But in the shelter of the docks, the water was silky smooth.

Gull and the reflection of red chairs and a wrapped green umbrella.

The light was too low to see the creatures growing on the floats beneath the wharf, but the camera's eye is always better than mine. On one float, where I just saw the black shape that I recognized as a tubeworm, the camera saw a whole community.

Vancouver feather-duster worm (Eudistylia vancouveri), plumose anemones (Metridium senile), sponges and/or tunicates, mussels, and more.

View of the north end of the bay and the light marking the tip of the rocks.

I always stop at the rocks at the south end of the bay. This time, the tide was high and the wind was brisk. Here, away from the shelter of the north hill, the waves were more pronounced. I leaned over the railing to watch them break on the rocks below until the cold drove me back to the car.

Warring waves; the incoming one meets the one bouncing back from the rock face.

Oh, and we're still in Arachtober, and I'm short of spider photos, so I scanned everything there; buildings and railings and rocks, looking for spiders. I found one (1) abandoned spider web:

In the shelter of a roof over a bench and carving. Out of the rain, protected from the wind.

Another gull, and the reflection of some of those rusty pilings.

A couple more gulls, tomorrow.

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

Vi Brown's Bay por primera vez en febrero de 2016, hace ya más de 7 años, y he visitado el sitio muchas veces desde entonces. Este lunes pasado, volví a hacer el viaje y lo encontré de alguna manera todo distinto. Me di cuenta que nunca había visto el lugar en medio otoño; cada visita ha sido entre enero y septiembre.

Todo estaba en calma. El restaurante había cerrado sus puertas el dia anterior; no abrirá hasta la primavera próxima. Una puerta quedaba abierta, pero no vi, ni oí a ninguna persona. Todavía quedaban las sillas en el patio, pero las sombrillas estaban cerradas y atadas contra el viento. Ya no hay canastas colgantes llenas de flores; solamente quedan dos de los nidos de golondrinas, vacios ya. A lo largo de los muelles, casi todos los espacios estaban libres. En el campamento en el cerro, dos hombres se ocupaban en preparar sus autocaravanas para el viaje al sur.

Foto #1: Uno de los muelles, vacio. Y los pilotes metálicos.

Ah, pero había gaviotas, muchas gaviotas, la mayoría en la zona exterior, donde el agua se agitaba por el viento. Y una foca grande que me vino a observar, hasta que preparé la cámara; entonces se largó. Afuera de la bahía, cerca de la costa en frente, podía ver las copas blancas de las olas que corrían velozmente hacia el sur, pero donde los muelles encerraban el agua, quedaba liso, como seda.

#2: Una gaviota con reflejos. Rojos, por las sillas. Lo verde refleja una sombrilla cerrada.

Había poca luz en la sombra de los muelles; yo no veía casi nada, pero la cámara tiene mejores ojos que yo. Un uno de los flotadores bajo el muelle, donde yo nada más veía la forma negra de un gusano plomero, la cámara vió toda una comunidad de criaturas marinas.

#3: Gusano plumero, Eudistylia vancouveri, y unas anémonas plumosas, además de mejillones, esponjas y otras criaturas.

#4: Vista del extremo del norte de la bahía, con el lucero que marca las rocas.

Siempre me detengo en las rocas al punto más al sur de la bahía. Esta vez, la marea estaba bien alta, y el viento, frio, estaba fuerte. Aquí, lejos del cerro que encierra la bahía al norte, las olas estaban un poco más abultadas. Me quedé un rato mirando como se quebraban contra las rocas, hasta que el frio me hizo buscar el calorcito del coche.

#5: Olas bajo las rocas.

Y seguimos en el mes de Arachtober (Arañoctubre) y me faltan fotos de arañas para esta última semana, así que buscaba en todas partes, alrededor de los edificios, los pasamanos, en las rocas y troncos de árboles, sin encontrar ni una sola arañita. Hubo una telaraña abandonada, con eso me tuve que encontentar.

#6: La telaraña.

y #7: Otra gaviota.

Mañana; más gaviotas.

Still tidepooling

Life on a bald rock; here there is no seaweed to hide the community. Most of the mobile animals have gone into hiding to wait out the exposure at low tide, but the sessile critters brazen it out.

Bryozoans and sponges, mainly

The white patches with a grid are the remains of an encrusting bryozoan. As far as I can tell without a microscopic examination, the dark orange patches are living; looking closely, you can see a regular pattern of tiny darker spots, the "mouths" of each individual animal.

The yellowish jelly is a sponge. Again, looking closely, you can see circles marked out where dust on the surface has caught the light; these would mark the outline of

 the intake holes of the sponge.

The smooth, round, whitish balls are probably eggs, probably of one of the dovesnails, Alia sp. There are two of these in the photo. I have only seen them once before on these shores.

See this photo on iNaturalist, snail and eggs, found just south of here.

Also present: one slowpoke hermit crab: of the tiny ones with yellowish legs, wearing a periwinkle shell; several periwinkles (or hermit crabs with borrowed shells); and many tiny spiral tubeworms.

I am surprised to find no barnacles.

Zooming in

I cropped and inset the photo to show those two snails, and the mouths of the sponge. The inset shows the grid of the bryozoans, living, dead but still solid, and the empty walls of individual boxes.

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

Sigo examinando lo que encuentro en las pozas intramareales. Esta comunidad vive en una piedra sin la protección de algas marinas, expuesta al sol cuando la marea baja. Los animalitos que pudieron se fueron a esconder en las sombras hasta que regrese el agua, pero los que viven fijos en su sitio tienen que aguantar la luz y la sequía.

Las manchas blancas en forma de red son los esqueletos de briozoos encrustantes. Hasta donde puedo determinar sin acceso a un microscopio, la gelatina anaranjada consiste en los animales vivos; se puede ver, acercándonos, los puntos organizados en forma regular; las "bocas" de cada animal. 

La gelatina amarillenta es una esponja; aquí, acercándonos, podemos ver unos círculos de puntitos luminosos donde el polvo capturó la luz. Estos círculos marcan el borde de cada boca de la esponja.

Las pelotitas blancas, lisas probablemente son los huevos de un caracol marino. Creo que pueden pertenecer a los dos caracolitos en la foto, de una especie que solamente he visto una vez anteriormente. Pueden ser, creo, un caracol paloma, una de las Alia. Encontré una foto del caracol, con huevos, en un sitio un poco al sur de aquí; aparece en iNaturalist.

Me sorprende no encontrar bálanos.

Aumenté la foto y la corté para ver mejor esos dos caracoles, y las bocas de la esponja. El recuadro muestra la red de los briozoos, vivos, muertos, y reducidos a las paredes de cada cajita.

Baby-blue chiton

The sun came out!

I walked on the shore at high tide, following the line of tossed-up seaweed, looking for kelp and barnacles for my aquarium critters, and empty whelk shells for the hermits; they've been growing and I've noticed them arguing over shells. The old ones are too small.

I found one damaged whelk shell. I was searching the wrong stretches of shore. Each section of the coast and intertidal level has its own unique community.  For whelks and barnacles, I need a lower tide.

But the weekend's stormy seas had ripped up and discarded things I usually only find at the bottom of the intertidal zone.

Mossy chitons, for example. Dead and crab-cleaned. And blue.

Mossy chiton, Mopalia muscosa

This chiton, alive, is covered with stiff, dark bristles, and the shell plates, from above, are dull grey or brown. Creeping over the rocks, it blends into the background.

But the inner shell is a bright blue, the flesh pinkish.

Tide and probably crabs have peeled off much of the outer coating, so even from above, this one is blue.

Another view, on a beached log.

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

¡Y salió el sol!

Caminé en la playa, buscando kelp y bálanos para los residentes de mi acuario, y conchas de caracoles marinos para los cangrejos ermitaños que han crecido tanto que ya están peleándose para reclamar conchas que les queden. La marea estaba casi a lo máximo, y no encontré más de una concha, y esa rota. Cada sección de playa y cada zona entre mareas tiene su propia comunidad. Para conchas de estos caracoles, hay que buscar cuando la marea está muy baja.

Pero a causa de las tormentas de los últimos dias, las olas habían arrancado vegetación del fondo, y sus habitantes, y las habían aventado a la parte superior de la playa. Buscando entre las algas y hierbas hecho pedazos y secándose al sol, hallé unos quitones, poliplacóforos, ya muertos y pelados por las olas y los cangrejos.

Y eran azules.

En vida, estos quitones son peludos, con pelo tieso, oscuro, y están cubiertos de una piel de color pardo, que sirve de camuflage. Arrastrándose sobre las rocas, casi desaparecen.

Pero la parte interior de sus ocho placas es de un azul claro, la carne de color de rosa.

Muddy buddies

For a few minutes, I looked at the mud between and under yesterday's rocks. It's busy down there:

From a distance, it just looks like brownish mud. Looking down at your feet, it's home to millions of pink-tipped green anemones. When the tide comes in, they'll all wake up and wave their pink tentacles above the surface of the mud.

I flipped a stone and found this iridescent polychaete worm. Also present: stubby isopods, mussels, barnacles, and a few crabs that scuttled away quickly. One didn't quite make it out of range. See it?

More stubby isopods, Gnorimosphaeroma oregonensis, and one large rockweed isopod, Idotea wosnesenskii. Names larger than the animals themselves.

That mud is slippery! I went down on my back, had to roll over in the mud to find something to grab and pull myself up. No harm done (a bit of a bruised tailbone is all), but this next photo was taken quickly while I hurried, dripping mud, back to the car. I should have, will later, stopped to look more closely.

Little black, sharp protrusions on the surface of the mud turned out to be the tips of an under-mud colony of mussels.

Watching it all, impassive:

Gull on a weedy rock.

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

Por algunos minutos, me detuve a mirar el lodo entre y debajo de las rocas que mostré ayer.

El lodo, a primera vista, parece sin interés, pero mirando directamente para abajo, se nota que está densamente poblado con millones de anémonas "Anthopleura elegantissima". Cuando sube la marea otra vez, cada una extenderá sus tentáculos color de rosa por encima de la superficie del lodo.

Volteé una piedra y encontré debajo este anélido poliqueto de colores iridiscentes. También presentes: isopodos "chaparros", mejillones, bálanos, y unos cangrejos que se apuraron a esconderse. Uno no logró desaparecer completamente. ¿Lo ves?

Más isopodos "chaparros' y un gran isopodo "Wosnesenski". Los pequeños isopodos llevan el nombre científico, "Gnorimosphaeroma oregonensis", un nombre mucho más largo que el animal.

¡Ese lodo es resbaloso! Terminé cayéndome sobre la espalda en el lodo. No hubo daño, aparte de un moretón en donde no se ve, pero tuve que revolcarme en el lodo para encontrar algo sólido para ayudarme a ponerme otra vez de pie. Así que la foto que sigue fue tomada sin cuidado, aprisa, mientras me apuraba, escurriendo lodo, para regresar al coche. Debería haberme detenido para investigar lo que veía. Otro día será.

Se veía en la superficie del lodo un grupo de lineas agudas, negras. Al mirarlas más de cerca, descubrí que eran mejillones, escondidos bajo el lodo, con solo las puntas al agua. Nunca había notado esto antes.

Y finalmente, una gaviota, mirando todo impasivamente.

Staying put

About those pilings:

All that remains

Once upon a time, long ago, there used to be a small dock here, at the far end of the beach south of Oyster Bay. All that is left is the double line of pilings, covered with mussels and barnacles.

Mostly mussels, Mytilus trossulus

And little acorn barnacles.

Peering into tide pools, or flipping rocks, or looking at masses of animals, like these, I take photos. Not very good photos, mostly; what there is to see is too muddled for the camera to focus, and I can't focus manually, wobbling on the mostly precarious footing. But at home, I zoom in and inspect the photos carefully; there's usually something I could not see without the help of the camera. They're not usually clear even then; I see the striped antenna of a hairy hermit, the angle of the knee of a kelp crab, a smiley face on the back of a shore crab, maybe a glimpse of the curved back of an amphipod or a flash of the iridescent body of a worm. There may be baby sea urchins, or a few tentacles of an anemone. Snails and limpets, usually.

In these mussel photos, and several more, there are barnacles. Not a hint of anything leggy. Barnacles and mussels, mussels and barnacles. Four or five small snails, on the outer edges of the clump.

 The thing is, mussels are dangerous to anything that wants to move about. Barnacles are sessile; once they're settled, they're there for life. But if you need to move to find food, better stay away from mussels. They tie themselves down to the substrate with incredibly tough threads, called byssal threads; I try to separate a few tied together by pulling them apart; can't be done. I would need a knife. One alone, I can handle with a good pull. And they tie down anything they touch.

I have put a few mussels in my aquarium; they're good filters. But I have to keep an eye on them; they capture wandering snails, tie them down, and let them die of starvation.

The mussels that have died and are gaping open have probably been eaten by swimming things.

Another couple of photos: the pilings are hollow, the inner wood eaten away. It was dark inside, and I couldn't see anything, but I poked the camera in and let the flash expose whatever was in there. I wish I had taken more: here are two that I took before I decided it was useless.

Most of the mussels and barnacles are on the outside. Inside, a red feather-duster tubeworm, a plumose anemone, sea lettuce.

A better look at the anemone.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Esos pilotes ...

Hace tiempo, había un muelle pequeño aquí al final de la playa al sur de Oyster Bay. Ahora no queda más que los pilotes, cubiertos de mejillones y bálanos.

En la playa, investigando pozas de marea, volteando piedras, o examinando masas de animales como estos, saco fotos. Muchas fotos, no muy buenas, ya que la cámara no puede decidir a donde enfocar, y no puedo usar enfoque a mano, puesto que estoy tambaleando sobre suelos resbalosos o temblantes. Pero en casa, examino esas fotos cuidadosamente, porque siempre hay algo que no pude ver a simple vista. La antena de un cangrejo ermitaño, Pagurus hirsutiusculus, el ángulo de la rodilla de un cangrejo "kelp", la cara sonriente marcada en el dorso de un cangrejo común, tal vez una fracción del dorso redondeado de un anfípodo, o los colores iridiscente de un gusano poliqueto. Habrá erizos de mar infantiles, los tentáculos de una anémona. Caracoles marinos y lapas, casi siempre.

En estas fotos de mejillones, y varias más que saqué en los pilotes, hay bálanos. Y ni un atisbo de nada con patas. Mejillones y bálanos, bálanos y mejillones. Unos cuatro o cinco conchas por las orillas.

La cosa es que los mejillones son peligrosos. Por lo menos, si algo quiere moverse. Los bálanos son sésiles; se adhieren a una superficie y nunca más se mueven. Pero si eres algo que tienes que andar de aquí para allá buscando comida, hay que evitar los mejillones. Ellos extienden sus lazos, los dichos hilos "byssus", muy fuertes, y amarran todo lo que tocan. He tratado de separar varios mejillones amarrados juntos; no pude. Necesitaba un cuchillo. Un mejillón en una piedra, si, con trabajos. Son increíblemente fuertes.

He traído a casa unos para añadirlos al acuario. Son animales filtrantes muy buenos. Pero los tengo que vigilar; atrapan y amarran conchas marinas, y las detienen hasta que se mueren de hambre.

El centro de los pilotes están vacíos. La madera interior se ha disuelto. Está muy oscuro ahí dentro, pero metí la cámara, usando el 'flash".  Lástima que no saqué más que tres o cuatro fotos antes de darme por vencida. Resulta que lo que vive adentro es distinto que lo que se halla afuera.

Estas dos fotos tienen un anélido de tubo "plumero", mostrando su flor rojo, y una anémona "Metridium senile", y un poco de alga "lechuga de mar".

Rainbow under rocks

The Willow Point beach is rocky; hard, round rocks, mostly cemented into the substrate. In the lower intertidal zone, they are often covered with green sea lettuce and rockweed. Where there is sandstone, it is pitted with green anemone holes. And everywhere there are barnacles, scuttling crabs, and tiny black snails. At the water's edge while the tide was turning, I flipped rocks and combed my fingers through the rockweed. Slow going, but worth the effort.

Here are some of the beasties I saw, in no particular order.

A flatworm, flatworm eggs, and two amphipods. This flatworm kept flipping her edges up towards me, instead of slithering along, as they usually do. It almost seemed as though she were defending her eggs.

A small kelp crab. This one's not wearing the seaweed hat. There was another with it, wearing the hat, just one patch of green algae growing near the top of the head. It ran away before I could get down to their level.

Limpet, periwinkle snail (or hermit in a periwinkle shell), two flatworms, and a pretty orange-striped green anemone, without the green.

Three limpets. Limpets wander about, lifting the forward edge as if to see where they're going. As soon as I touch them, they clamp down and cement themselves to the rock. These ones are still on the move.

Limpets, a whelk, and 6 of the tiny yellow or orange hermit crabs in periwinkle shells.

I haven't been able to identify these hermits. They are always tiny, and brightly coloured. I had at first thought they were greenmark hermits, Pagurus caurinus, which are the right size, but they have unbanded antennae; these little guys have green and white bands on their antennae.

Catching a few rays: there's a starfish, or maybe several starfish under this rock.

A fat ribbon worm. At the upper right, there's a small polychaete that I didn't see until I blew up the photo.

A two-toned polychaete.

This was the highlight of my afternoon. This worm has a blue front end, but the rear half is a bright pink. If you look closely (click on the photo to enlarge it) you can see the four eyes on the head. It's about 18 inches long. (More or less, these worms shrink and stretch continuously.)

There's a wandering ribbon worm, Paranemertes peregrina, with its purple back and cream belly, at the lower left, and a tiny greenish worm at the lower right.

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.

Rock houses

Anemones are squishy. Touch one (not the tentacles; sometimes they sting). Touch the stalk; it feels like watery Jello. It leaks tears at your touch, and shrinks. Now it's regular Jello texture, still springy, still soft.

They have no teeth, no rasping mechanisms, no scratchy outer shell. So how do they excavate holes in rock?

Sandstone boulder, Willow Point. With ancient anemone homes around the edge.

Another boulder, another set of holes. This is rock, not sand.

Sometimes the holes line up along the edge of a flat rock. Sometimes the whole rock is pock-marked. And the next rock, of the same material, is smooth, without a hole to be seen.

Some holes are just that; old holes. I poke at them with a finger. There's nothing there but rock, hard and dry.

Some holes are occupied. The surrounding rock is hard, but if I touch the centre of a hole, it shrinks away from my finger, leaking tears, exposing a flash of yellow or green jelly.

Anemones in their rocky holes, unhappy because I poked them.

The beach life is layered.  Here, crabs, limpets, and snails in shallow pools, a seaweed level (sea cauliflower and red algae), barnacles on the bottom of a flat rock, and a rim of holes around the upper side. And more barnacles and algae on the top. Crouch and look up at the underside of the rock; there may be a starfish or three.

Why are the holes so often lined up along the edge of flat rocks? Could it be something to do with the currents bringing foods, the way the anemones in my aquarium congregate near the top of the tank, sometimes half out of the water? Do they line up because new babies move only a little way from their parent?

Why do they choose one rock, and not the next? Why is one rock smooth, its neighbour completely pock-marked, and the next one free of holes except for one edge?

Are some of those holes ancient limpet beds, hollowed out by years of tidewaters? Is there a way to tell the difference?

And in my tank, why do the few pink-tipped green anemones who choose to stay at the bottom park themselves mostly on oyster shells, almost never on stone?

I ask them, but they never answer.

Crunchies

The sandstone shore around the glacial erratic I visited last week, exposed at mid-tide, is densely populated by large barnacles. Millions of them; billions, maybe.

Thatched acorn barnacles*; one small patch.

I felt guilty, walking across this beach: crunch, crunch: at every step I could hear breaking shells. I tried to find spots with no barnacles to put my feet down, but there were few.

At one point, I turned and examined the barnacle I had just stepped on. There it stood, undisturbed, solid as ever. How strong are those shells? I think, possibly, the crunches I heard were dead, empty shells; they seem easy to break, from the right angle. More experiments are needed.

Stone formation, with barnacles, oysters, gull and more.

Farther down the beach, below the erratic, a few slabs of stone stood like a fence against the waves. Here, I found more barnacles, and a scattering of oysters, each one firmly cemented to the rock. The dark green stuff is rockweed.

More than meets the eye.

All across this plain, and crammed into every niche in the rocks, tiny critters go about their business, dwarfed by the barnacles. Looking closely, I found hundreds of pinhead snails. (But when I brought a handful home, most of them contained miniature orange-legged hermit crabs.) In the photo above, only one hermit crab is identifiable, but most of the blue-black snails are probably hermits, too. In the lower third, left of centre, a yellow patch is made up of whelk egg cases. And here and there, limpets try to blend into the rock.

Empty barnacle shell and black rock algae.

I brought home a few barnacles to clean my tank and feed my barnacle-loving snails. Checking them over before I added them to the aquarium, I found several healthy flatworms. No matter how strong a barnacle shell may be, these worms can slither through the cracks between plates, kill and eat the barnacle inside. Some flatworms may even eat the oysters.

*Barnacles may be hard to identify, but the thatched acorn has a black feeding foot. The barnacles that came home with me all have black cirri.