Shore Life

LEMONS WITH BUTTER
It's been a long while since I've come down from the mountain forest to the beach. So, it was a sweet surprise to take time to check under the railroad bridge at Marine Park Beach for sea lemons which I've found there in the past.

The last time I looked in this spot, there was a sign overhead on the bridge warning folks to keep from entering underneath because a Great Blue Heron rookery is on the other side, beyond a lagoon up the shore. People were alerted to stay clear for fear of startling the heron families. But no sign was up, and my fellow explorer and I felt we were being quiet and unobtrusive enough to just view, photograph and wonder briefly at the lovely yellow sea lemons and their nursery of buttery, ever-so-slightly undulating concentric rings of eggs.

DISCOVERING HOODED NUDIBRANCHS
In the summer of 2016, while on a family excursion to Dot Island, we found certain parts of the near shore eel grass was replete with small, medium and large sized of hooded nudibranchs -- one of my favorites! It was a bustling cache of molluscs clinging on together. I carefully dipped an open clam shell into the water to lift one nudibranch out. I watched it swish its body up and down around its wide open hood as I filmed for 11 seconds, then slipped it back where I found it. When I was home to view the short film, to my happy surprise, I captured the sound of the waves that washed up and back in synchronization with the nudibranch's swishing.

My first discovery of this creature was on one late fall afternoon when I was exploring tide pools with my young son at Larrabee State Park Beach. We had some free time together while my daughter was at her violin lesson just some minutes north up Chuckanut Highway. My son and I were standing on the rocks jutting into the bay when we saw two white-opaque blobs each swishing its body gracefully in the surf. They were bigger than the sample in this observation. We had no idea what we were looking at. But with a bit of Googling at home, I'd learned they were hooded nudibranchs. It was a gray, damp, yet magical moment of discovery I got to share with my son!

Publicado el 18 de abril de 2020 por lbalton