Low Tide: Starfish

A friend and I went down to the beach late the other night for one of the big low tides of the season. Fortunately her headlamp was strong, because mine was in real need of a battery change - I kept forgetting I even had it turned on because it didn't make much of a difference unless I was holding something a few inches from my face.

We saw quite a bit of cool and pretty things. I may post one or two more later on. A friend suggested this intertidal website for identification purposes. I'm not convinced that what I have pictures of are necessarily the same exact species (and I think some of the species I took pictures of are not on that website), but it seems like a pretty cool resource.

One thing I notice about these starfish is that they have a larger white spot just off center. If I had only seen one of these starfish I probably would have assumed that it was just a random spot, but it seems to be on all of this sort of starfish. I wonder what it is?

Sea Anemones

These were in a tide pool along the beach where we were stranded. I accidentally took a picture with a flash and it turned out much better that way.



This one was in a tide pool on Kruzof. I wonder what the ribbony stuff in the middle of this one is.

Low Tide

Last night around 10pm there was a very low tide in the sound so I went with a friend down to the beach to explore. It was a strange experience for me to be out at such low tide at night. I am used to the really low tides being early in the morning, which is how I always remember it being where I grew up.

Megan is a lot more knowledgeable about intertidal stuff than I am, so it was fun to look around with her. Most of our exploring focused on and around largish rocks sitting down near the water (I guess they would normally be covered if the tide weren't so low). There were lots of interesting things to see: starfish, gumboots, crab (even a couple of dungeness), worms, anenomes, sea cucumber (which I'd never before seen in the wild), and a nudibranch (which I'd never before seen outside of pictures). There was also a heron in the water, apparently hunting, which was unexpected as I wouldn't have thought a cloudy night would be a very good hunting time for them.