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· 20TH OF MAY, THE YEAR 2007

TIDEPOOL BLITZ

It recently occurred to me that a series of very low tides would coincide with the brief gap between the semester’s end and my summer job, so I decided to go for three days of consecutive tidepooling, and stay on the coast for the two nights to avoid helping the terrorists.

Day 1: Duxbury Reef

The first morning I awoke at 4AM, stumbled around my apartment making coffee, and headed for Duxbury Reef. The wind was biting and the water was utterly freezing, but the tide was way out, as promised. I actually didn’t see all that much out there, which was surprising. Maybe the surf was a bit high. Anyway, here’s my list o’ slugs and some pics.

Nudibranchs Found

1. Aegires albopunctatus
2. Triopha maculata
3. Doto amyra
4. Flabellina trilineata
5. Phidiana hiltoni
6. Cuthona lagunae

After that bit of fun, I drove down the coast, across the Golden Gate, and all the way down to El Granada, where there’s a cafe I like called Cafe Classique, with free wifi, decent coffee, breakfast, and wonderful baked goods. Ordered myself an omelet, and played with my photos for 2 hours or so. Wonderful little place.

After that I headed to the Montara Lighthouse Hostel. Spectacular view, full kitchen, couches, beds, wifi, for $24. Pretty awesome. Spent the rest of the afternoon and evening reading Harry Potter and Patrick O’Brian, and playing with my photos some more.

Day 2: Bean Hollow

The next morning started with a 5AM alarm and a drive down the coast. Cafe Classique was actually open, so I tanked up on drug broth and headed for Bean Hollow State Beach, another one of my favorite spots. There I met up with John, a contact of mine from Flickr and fellow tidepooler. Bean Hollow was overflowing with life, and the weather was mild (i.e. I didn’t feel like dying by the end). Lots of cool slugs, many that I hadn’t seen since last year or the year before. Flabellina trilineata was definitely the most common one we saw, often in clusters. I even found some eggs that I think my have belonged to F. trilineata. Yay.

John knows a whole lot more about intertidal fauna than I do, and he was pointing out a lot of cool stuff I didn’t know about, like hydroids (not the same as sea pens, d’oh), the difference between strawberry anemones and cup corals (the former are red and white, the latter orange), and the absolutely insane spaghetti worm, which uses its two jillion tentacles to gather food. Fantastic morning all around. Onto the slug bill and pics!

Nudibranchs Found

1. Aegires albopunctatus
2. Triopha maculata
3. Diaulula sandiegensis
4. Rostanga pulchra
5. Cadlina luteomarginata
6. Cadlina modesta
7. Tritonia festiva
8. Dendronotus frondosus
9. Dendronotus subramosus
10. Doto amyra
11. Flabellina trilineata
12. Hermissenda crassicornis
13. Cuthona divae

After a great early morning, grabbed some scones and oranges from the car and sat on the beach reading until about noon. Not exactly warm, but layers and some helpful radiation from the sun made for a pleasant time. After that, it was back to the cafe for some more food and wifi, then up the coast for yet another bout of beach reading, and then into the city for Kevin’s birthday taco crawl through the Mission. Great tacos all around, highlight being the excellent carnitas at El Farolito, low light being the cockroach crawling across the table at the legendary Taqueria Cancun. Stayed at Maggie’s place that night, since she was on board for even more tidepooling the next morning.

Day 3: Fitzgerald Marine Reserve

Slightly later wake-up call at 6AM, and then down the coast a little ways to Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. Fitzgerald is a well-known spot, with docents and placards and the like, so there were a few other people out there on the reef, but that didn’t detract in the slightest, as there was a ton to see. I’d sent out an email to an iSchool listserv about this morning, so we were joined by a bunch of stout and sturdy iSchoolers willing to brave the icy winds and treacherous algae. All manner of sea stars were in abundance, including your garden variety Ochre Stars, Bat Stars, Six-rayed Stars, and several of the massive Sunflower Stars. The harbor seals were out as usual, some of them getting curious and swimming over to check us out. We found a massive Cabezon in one of the pools, which is a fish that looks like an algae-covered rock. Exactly like one. It took me several minutes looking through the pool before I saw it (this thing was about 1/2 a meter, and not particularly well-hidden), and even when I was standing a meter away pointing at it, people still took 10 or 20 seconds to say “That’s a fish? Oh! I see it!” Pretty cool. Slugs were out too, including the crowd-pleasing Opalescents, and some nerd-pleasing new species for me: Eubranchus rustyus and Cuthona albocrusta (both under 1 cm in length, but spectacular in close up).

Nudibranchs Found

1. Acanthodoris lutea
2. Aegires albopunctatus
3. Triopha maculata
4. Diaulula sandiegensis
5. Peltodoris nobilis
6. Rostanga pulchra
7. Cadlina modesta
8. Doto amyra
9. Flabellina trilineata
10. Eubranchus rustyus
11. Hermissenda crassicornis
12. Cuthona albocrusta

I didn’t take that many pictures, mostly because I was trying to actually hang out with people a little more than with the slugs, but you can check out Andrea’s and Nate’s photos, and I’m sure Kevin and Jon will have their’s up eventually. Great morning had by all. Including a cave shark!

Also, I got a little scolded by the docents at Fitzgerald. I was about to jump in a pool and snag a little Acanthodoris lutea to show people (this is the one that smells like sandalwood), when one of the docents muttered, “We don’t really do that,” to the person next to her. “What I’m doing?” I asked. “Yes. It damages habitat.” “Yeah, you’re right,” I replied, and stopped what I was doing. Later, as we were packing up in the parking lot, another docent came over to us and let us know that he had been watching us from the cliff, and let us know that containers and removing things from the pool is illegal. He let us be since he figured our intentions were innocent enough, what with our cameras and generally unsuspicious demeanor, but told us that next time we should look, touch, but not remove. He was very nice about it, if a little condescending, but it touched a nerve with me. As I wrote last time, I’m trying to codify (or learn about) this idea of engagement as a conservationist and environmental ethic. For me, that involves photography and letting people have a very close look at creatures. When tidepooling, you can get an awful lot out of just sitting quietly beside a pool and watching, but there are some things, like some of the tiny nudibranchs, that you can barely see without removing them from the pool. Often times, letting a group of people see something requires putting it in a dish and passing it around. So while I agree that at a high-traffic place like Fitzgerald it’s good to have a no removal policy, I’m not sure it really supports the level of engagement necessary to fully know the rocky intertidal habitat. Of course, there aren’t a whole lot of people who want to know that habitat quite as much as I do, I guess, and perhaps my level of engagement is somewhat detrimental (although I’d say the warning on the Fitzgerald website that “You may touch marine life, but DO NOT pick it up or place it in a container. If you do they will die” is patently false (I’ve seen biologists from the California Academy of Science do it, after all, and these creatures are mostly adapted to the possibility of at least partial desiccation), and somewhat patronizing. As far as removal being illegal, that’s probably true within the reserve, but I’m not sure it’s true elsewhere. The only other time I’ve come close to running afoul of the authorities was when I met up with a Fish and Game warden, and he told me it was fine to remove things from the pools to take pictures, as long as I didn’t keep them (obviously) or move them around. Maybe I should do some research, and learn to step a bit more lightly.