We went tidepooling... or investigating around tide pools. I don't remember ever doing that before on the Pacific Ocean. It was really fun and I enjoyed using my waterproof camera.
Closed anemone without a pebble covering
Partially closed anemone with pebble covering, (they were usually covered with sand and pebbles when they were out of the water to protect themselves from drying out and predators.
Open anemone
Bivalves on rocks
Chiton (the green one in the groove or "home scar". They are a type of mollusk with 8 plates and they crawl around when the tide is in and eat algae and other stuff, (herbivores) with their "radula" (tongue) that is encrusted with magnetite. This means their tongue is very raspy and so they can eat stuff by rasping it off the rocks.
Here is a chiton so you can see the underside. (not my thumb :) )
Here is a snail that had pretty green flesh. Jeremy is good at finding stuff like this. I like doing stuff like this with him.
Here is a fish who really thought he was camouflaged but I got really close.
Swimming crab
Anyway, it was really fun and reminded me a lot of some books my Mom used to read to me by Holling Clancy Holling, particularly "Pagoo" which talks about tide pool life. It made me want to read it again.
Also I was fascinated by the chitons and had to do some research about them. They are weird little critters. I couldn't find out anywhere if they actually carve out little holes for themselves or if just by returning to the same spot all the time they cause a hole to form. Almost all of the ones we saw, and we found a lot, were in little holes.
If you don't mind me asking where in California were you? When I was down by San Diego I did not find any tide pools just artificial beautiful sandy beaches.
ReplyDeleteWe were closer to Los Angeles. And there was one of those sandy beaches too, we just had more fun, and took more pictures at the tide pool one.
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