A different perspective

Yesterday I had the great fortune to visit a new intertidal site. It can be accessed only by crossing private property. The property owner is my next-door neighbor, and he said I can visit any time. As I said, lucky me! The site is a little north of Pigeon Point, and at first glance the terrain is not very different from Pigeon. But I could tell that it a site that is rarely, if ever, visited by humans. It just had that look of being mostly undisturbed. Yesterday’s marine layer was low, making for dark skies and pretty lousy light for picture-taking, so I had to try something new.

This site has a lot of lovely pools and channels to explore, and at this time of year the water is very clear, which does make for good picture-taking. Halosaccion glandiforme, one of the charismatic red algae, is more abundant here than at other sites, and in the pools it grows quite a bit taller than it does on the rocks.

Here’s what it looks like on the tops of the rocks. This is a cluster of young thalli. The tallest of these “bladders” is about 4 cm tall. Note that they are about 2/3 full of water, with a large air space at the top.

The really cool thing is what happened when I stuck the camera in the water and took a shot. I got something like this:

I got a little carried away. But don’t things look interesting from the turban snail’s perspective?

I’m kind of enraptured by these towers of algae.

But the best part of these experiments was the reflections on the surface of the water. Check it out.

And this is the money shot! I just love how this turned out.

This was a super fun morning. I’m looking forward to visiting this site again, when the light is better. When the daylight low tides return in a few months they will be in the afternoon. I anticipate some fantastic light shows in these pools and channels. I’ll be teaching most afternoons by then, but will get out as often as I can.