An assortment of rocks

This latest low tide day, I visited a section of beach that I'd never been able to reach before. And there were rocks. So many different rocks! Here are some of them, and I'll leave the critters for tomorrow.

Tide's still going out. In this area, mostly seaweedy rocks.

Coming back an hour later, this was halfway up the beach.

10:40 AM. Starting off, walking down to the edge, on a causeway of rounded "cookie" stones. This is as far as I'd been before.

10:48. Still underwater. An unusually-shaped stone, clean and blue, two hands'-breadth. I saw no others like it.

12:21 PM. On my way back up the beach, at mid-tide level. Oyster-bearing rocks.

Sorry; not in chronological order. 11:20 AM. Getting near the low edge. So many rocks bear these holes; as if a giant had been bouncing on a pogo-stick.

And each hole was a mini tidepool, where mobile animals waited out the dry spell. Here, purple sea stars, an anemone, a hermit, in a hole about 15 cm. across.

Near the top of the intertidal zone, were more of these large "cookies".

And they hold somewhat barren tidepools.

Just another glacial erratic. The barnacle incrustation more or less indicates the usual high tide level.

A first-year Bonaparte's gull. Large flat areas of the lower intertidal zone are covered with slippery sea lettuce.

Ok. There were two reasons I'd never been able to reach this part of the shore before. First, obviously, because I'd never come there when the tide was this low. And secondly; footwear.

The areas that look easiest to walk on; those flat, green spaces, under a cover of pretty sea lettuce; they almost look like mowed lawns. They're not. And they're dangerous. With every step, your foot slides out from under you; it's like the slickest of slick ice.

And some of the bumpy, rocky areas are just as bad; there's the sea lettuce coating on top of rocks that roll out from underfoot. I've fallen a few times, not something I want to repeat.

But this time (why didn't I think of this long ago?) I wore ice cleats on my thrift-store sneakers; those wire and rubber attachments that go on over whatever shoe or boot you wear, advertised as winter gear. (Like these.) And with those on, I could walk normally, everywhere. Yay! I'm thinking now of another beach, one I've avoided before; not any more.

Tomorrow; the critters that live here.

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

Cuando la marea estaba a su nivel más bajo, el sábado pasado, pude visitar una parte de la playa donde nunca antes había estado. Encontré gran variedad de rocas, todas diferentes. Aquí hay algunas, y dejo los animalitos para mañana.

1. La marea llega a la mitad de la zona intermareal. Estas rocas luego estaban totalmente expuestas.
2. Cuando pasé por aquí una hora más tarde, esto estaba a media playa.
3. Apenas empezando; este "camino" de rocas planas, arenosas cruzaba la zona alta. Hasta aquí yo había llegado antes. 10:40 AM.
4. Una piedra bajo el agua. No vi ninguna otra parecida. Mide unos 20 cm.
5. 12:21. Regresando hacia tierra firma ya. Hay muchas piedras cerca de la mitad de la zona como estas, cubiertas de bálanos y ostiones. (Que hasta parecen ser parte de la roca misma.)
6. Cerca de la zona más baja, muchas rocas llevan estos pocitos; como si un gigante hubiera estado jugando con un palo saltarín.
7. Y cada pocito se convierte en albergue para animales donde esperan a que regrese el agua. Aqui, estrellas de mar, una anémona, un cangrejo ermitaño.
8. En la zona superior intermareal, se ven estas "galletas", casi desnudas.
9. Y en estas, los pocitos intermareales contienen unas pocas algas marinas y caracolitos, Littorina sp.
10. Otro de esos bloques erráticos glaciares. Donde está cubierto de bálanos la marea alta cubre la roca.
11. Una gaviota "Bonaparte" en su primer año. Grandes secciones de la zona están cubiertas de lechuga marina, muy resbalosa.

Por dos razones nunca había visitado esta parte de la playa antes. Primeramente, claro, porque nunca llegué cuando la marea estaba tan baja. Y, segundo, no llevaba calzado adecuado.

Esas areas que parecen buenas para caminar; esos espacios planos, verdes, cubiertas de la bella lechuga de mar, que casi parecen céspedes bien cortados, no lo son. Son peligrosas. Con cada paso, tu pie resbala; es como caminar en el hielo más resbaloso posible.

Y hay sitios con rocas pequeñas, rocas redonditas, que son igualmente peligrosos; la lechuga de mar cubre piedras que se rodean bajo tus pies. Me he caído algunas veces; no es algo que quiero repetir.

Pero esta vez (y ¿porqué no se me ocurrió antes?) llevaba tacos de agarre para hielo bajo mis zapatos; un arreglo de alambre y hule que se fija sobre cualquier zapato o bota; los venden como equipo para invierno. (Como estos.) Y con esos puestos, pude caminar como sin nada, en todas partes. ¡Excelente!

Para mañana; las criaturas.

Decorator colours

The plumose anemone in my tank has a brown column and  beige tentacles, a common combination. Often, though, they are white on white; a white column, and whiter tentacles. I had never seen one with a green head before.

Plumose anemone, Metridium senile in the tidepool under the glacial erratic. With green tentacles.

I browsed images on Google; I found a few white "Mets" with pale green tentacles, always in photos taken during a dive. This one is in a few inches of water. And that was the colour as my eyes saw it; I used the flash, because the anemone was in shade, but those tentacles were a definite blue-green.

Another. This one has white tentacles, but the base is a pale blue.

This one matches the one in my tank. Some of the red blotches around it are tubeworm "flowers".

Another "normal" M. senile.

Deep under the rock, starfish wait out the dry spell. The flat, spread out anemone seems to be a burrowing anemone, with its mouth exposed. Must have just eaten something. Maybe one of those little fish?

More vivid colours. A deep pink tubeworm, still fishing while the water lasts. The pink-tipped green anemones below have shut down for now.

Even the hermit crabs are wearing party colours. I spotted this one with those bright blue pincers, like the one I brought home last week.

Three hermits, a dead kelp crab,and limpets. The deep red  critters at bottom right are not fish; they're shreds of seaweed.

Kelp crabs are usually a dull olive green, sometimes greenish brown. I don't know if this one was joining the explosion of colour in his lifetime, or if there's some sort of blue-green algae that took over his carapace and legs after he died.

This photo was taken aiming straight down into a foot-deep rounded hole. There are many of these near the bottom of the intertidal zone; circular holes, smooth-walled, looking like someone at some time removed a bowling ball from the rock. What causes this? I don't know.

I am always on the lookout for nice whelk shells for my hermits at home. Here, around this erratic, there are many whelks, all healthy and shiny, but no empty shells. And almost every hermit crab I saw was wearing a smashed and broken shell. What happened to the fresh shells?

I feel sorry for these hermits; the ones I brought home were quick to switch into intact shells; they do know the difference. I almost feel like collecting some decent shells from my tank and spreading them around this tide pool. Or would the tide immediately haul them off and slam them against the rocks until they were full of holes?

Questions, questions.

Just out of reach

I'm fascinated by the pool under the erratic boulder; I went back again today, and discovered new and amazing things again. More photos to be processed!

So far, I've not found the area dry, so all the photos (and what I saw) are warped under a hand's length of wind-blown water. Some look like abstract paintings:

A cozy home to assorted chitons, various anemones, starfish, encrusting pink algae, barnacles, whelks, and many hermits in smashed shells.

5 or more chitons here. Look for the reddish girdle, with a paler central oval. 

A sample red-girdled chiton, very tiny, found on a rock. 8 pale shell segments and a red-brown girdle.

Another of the black leather chitons. Several species live under this rock.

The view from the access point. The second erratic, where the pool is, is on the far, far right.

Today I walked around the point to a third, slightly smaller erratic, but couldn't quite reach it because the tide was too high, and I was keeping my so-called "waterproof" shoes dry. They can handle an inch of water, but no more, and it's a long walk back with squelchy socks.

Another day, another low tide. At least the weather is finally cooperating.

I brought home another Giant Pacific chiton, very dead; it's soaking now in hydrogen peroxide. If all works out, I'll eventually have photos of the internal shells.

Next: surprising anemones.

Over the hill

On the back side of the information kiosk on Mitlenatch Island, there were the animals we could hope to see.

Birds, mammals, intertidals, and a snake. Needs its own heading, doesn't it?

Over the top of the hill, we came to the caretakers' cabin. It's a ramshackle, half old lumber, half driftwood, half green walled home away from home. There's a rustic kitchen/storeroom/shower with a half roof, loose plank floor and rough wood shelves. There's an office/study/cold weather room, and a low-ceilinged bedroom. A brisk walk away, there's an open-air outhouse (private, if roofless), and a plastic john for rainy days.

From April to September, two people stay here, a week at a time, to watch for too-enthusiastic visitors and record the changes as the season rolls on. I hear there's a waiting list.

Old moon snail shell, on a tray of dried bones and cracked shells at the gate to the cabin.

One of this week's caretakers, Peggy, met us on the trail and filled us in on the latest news. The gulls on the north cliff were ready to lay their eggs; they should be starting the next day, and the eggs would be hatching in four weeks. On the cliffs over the water, they'd be a bit later. There was a dead seal (I think: my memory fails me here) down below the cabin, slightly nibbled on. She hoped to get permission to study it. And had we seen the tiger lily? (I hadn't; too busy taking photos of something else.)

Showing us the find. 

Camp Bay, from the caretaker's hill. That's the other half of our group in the dinghy, Dave the caretaker on the shore, and Peggy behind him in a blue jacket.

And then we were heading back across the hill to meet the dinghy and trade places with the seal watchers. But first, I had to climb down to a tide pool, take a few fast photos before I scrambled back up the rocks and ran to catch up with the group at the far shore.

The tide was almost in; I didn't see "cucumbers as big as my arm" as per the information kiosk. There were tiny snails, a few small hermits, limpet shells, and hiding in the cracks, a couple of crabs. And three orange-striped green anemones, Diadumene lineata. Made my day; I hadn't seen one of these since Boundary Bay days. The largest one is just below the rock, centre right edge.

I caught up to the group, out of breath, just as the dinghy came in. We boarded, Mike turned her around, and we puttered out to see cormorants and sea lions.

Tomorrow; the sea monsters, finally.

(6th in a series of 9 Mitlenatch Island posts. #1, #2, #3, #4. #5. #6, #7, #8)

Evening on the beach

I had an unexpected free evening, the last before I became responsible for a demanding kitten, so I went to wander on the shore and watch the light fade. It was raining slightly, off and on; I threw on a jacket, more to shelter the camera than for me.

While there was still light, I scrambled down to the water's edge and peered under rocks. Down in the tidepools, crabs scuttled away at my approach, tidepool sculpins dashed out of cover, and then froze, trying for invisibility in plain sight, not very successfully.

Random shot from a precarious, slippery balancing stone. I count 9 stripy sculpins here.

In the shade of the larger rocks, a pink encrusting growth covered many surfaces.

Pink encrusting algae, limpets, plumose anenomes, hermit crabs, snails, and sea urchins. If you look closely, you can find tiny orange specks; spiral calcareous tubeworms, feeding.

The pink encrusting algae, and a deeper red crust. I think the greenish sections are older patches of the red.

An assortment of red algae, including one iridescent species, growing higgledy-piggledy together. The little dotted lines are hermit crab antennae.

The rain picked up; I headed back to the top of the beach, close to shelter. The rain stopped.

Cloudy sky, looking north from Big Rock. 7:34 PM.

Looking east to the mountain peaks on the mainland. 8PM.

An orange glow just before the light fades. 8:15 PM.

And then it was raining again. But I'd found the remains of a driftwood fire, still glowing under the logs, and stayed to feed it until the wood was too wet.

Let it rain!

A Skywatch post.

(This was a difficult post: Chia doesn't understand why she shouldn't be helping with the typing.)

Seaweed graffiti

Nearing sundown on a grey afternoon, a tidepool somehow found a bit of blue sky to reflect. I stopped to take a photo.

It wasn't until later that I noticed the seaweedy face frowning at me across the pool.

Seaweed designs on rocks. A few steps away from the tidepool.

It almost looks as if I should be able to read this. Almost.

Seen too late

On the wide, flat sands of Boundary Bay, residents park their boats helter-skelter, tying them to a variety of home-made anchor points. There is no need for a wharf; some people just wade ashore from a close tie-up, others, anchored farther out, use paddle-boards or small skiffs to reach their boat when the tide is in. The sand is dotted with these contraptions, sometimes a chain attached to something deep in the sand, or an old rope tied to a bucket of cement.

Each of these creates its own mini-environment, catching floating seaweeds or logs, providing holes and crevices for a variety of intertidal critters, and a solid substrate for barnacles and mussels. Sand flows around them as the tide comes and goes, making hills and valleys, semi-permanent tide-pools where a small fish can wait safely through the dry hours.

Walking on the sand at low tide, I veer from one anchor point to the next; no two alike, none uninhabited.

We stopped at this one yesterday:

A half-buried bucketload of cement, with rusted metal fittings, long turned into red stone, encrusted with barnacles and seaweeds.

The "face" of the bucket, with a small log and a deepish pool.

Both Laurie and I poked our cameras into those two holes; none of the photos were any good, but we did see what was inside. They are rusty metal tubes, probably where some sort of fixture to hold a boat was attached. The top one shelters several hermit crabs and snails; a small, green crab guards the door of the lower tube.

"You can't see me; I'm green, and I'm hiding under green seaweed!"*

*(That's assuming that a crab sees colours the same as we do, which is entirely unevidenced.)

On the downstream side of the bucket, the current has hollowed out a pool and a long, shallow valley, paving the valley with broken clamshells.

Refraction through a couple of inches of water.

And where the shells peter out, in a calm backwater, worms keep on feeding while the rest of the beach lies dormant.

These are the largest worm tubes I have seen on the beach, up to 3 inches tall, standing firm.

They remind me of tipsy pilings left behind when an old wharf is demolished. But these have neat holes in the top, and if you look closely at the right moment, transparent tentacles reaching out.

And look again! See that whitish thing near the centre, that square with a tail? I didn't, when I was taking the photos, and it turned up on a half dozen. So I missed out; must be more observant.

The Mud-flat Hooded Shrimp, Nebalia pugettensis!

I last saw one of these 4 years ago. And the one before that was another 4 years earlier (Two posts). They're probably plentiful on the beach, but they're usually burrowing in the muck. This may be a dead one, or a molt. The live one I found had blue eyes; the dead ones I'd seen earlier had red eyes.

If you look back at the first photo of the Nebalia, you might see the second one, down by the lower right hand corner, half-hidden behind a blade of eelgrass.

And here's another one:

Very hairy green crab, not bothering to hide. And just below the broken shell at upper left, another Nebalia.

This one has no colour left. It must be a molted carapace and legs.

I hope I don't have to wait another 4 years before I see my next mud shrimp.

Next: another bucket.

Tree on the sand

More reflections

Winter tree, White Rock tidepool

A Skywatch (upside down) post.

Hunger is the best spice

Another Campbell River post

On a beach at the south end of the Campbell River Rotary seawalk, there is a tidewater pool, which looks artificial; a square dredged out of the stony beach, with not much to say for itself as yet. We walked out to the far side of this at low tide. The scenery, looking out across the water to Quadra Island, was beautiful, as always. But the beach was mostly clean rocks, with nothing much living underneath, not even seaweed.

Dry rocks and tiny barnacle shells

Periwinkle snails gather just above the water line.

It was difficult walking on the loose stones, and Laurie's injured leg was bothering him by the time we got to the water's edge, so he sat on a rock and I entertained myself looking for interesting stones. At the edge of a small tide pool - grey rocks, grey stones, grey rocks - I noticed a half-dried, rotting kelp stipe, balanced on the stones. The tide was coming in, and as it reached the kelp, purple shore crabs began to crawl out from between the rocks to attack the kelp, which they began eating hungrily.

Not much else to eat on this beach.

As the water rose, more and more crabs appeared. The first arrivals fought off the newcomers, often knocking them back down into the water. Occasionally, three or more would be struggling together, legs and pincers intertwined.

I've seen crab fights before, usually over some choice bit of fish, but never over dry kelp.

I count 14 in this photo, of a small section of the kelp.

The green crab at the right is also a purple shore crab.

Green shore crabs (aka,  Oregon shore crabs) may be many colours, usually green, white, or grey. The purples are usually purple, sometimes green. I have a white one in the aquarium. They are distinguishable, sometimes, by the polka-dotted pincers (see the one near the left on the photo above) and by their hairless legs; the green shore crabs are hairy. (Here's a green and white green shore crab; notice the hairy legs.)