Sea Snot And Other Low Tide Favorites

A -3.1 low tide is always a good enough reason to make a trip to the beach. And the chance to check out the local sea snot is an even better reason!

I call it sea snot, but it's really a tunicate. The yellow snot stuff is an invasive tunicate and local naturalists are up in arms about how to get rid of it. We were told that they have even used blowtorches to try to burn it off the rocks - but the tunicate is smarter than man, and when burned or cut, it simply spawns and forms more. Ick. In the meantime, it's doing a lot of damage to our interidal zones until marine biologists find a better way to get rid of it.

Even with a -3.1 and so much to explore, when at the beach, all Henry really wants to do is find crabs. He loves finding beach crabs.

Alice is partial to snails, aka whelks.

She even found this beautiful orange one. All sorts of barnacles, limpets, and crabs were nearby.

One of the naturalists found a jelly. It was really cool and had a perfect star shape on it's underside.

At one point, one of the naturalists thought she had found an octopus between the rocks and got everyone all excited. However, it turned out to be a midshipsman - which is a fish that can live out of water. It was a male and was busy guarding it's eggs.

Lots of sea anemones, sea cucumbers, sea stars (we even saw a 6 legged baby sea star), more tunicate (the red stuff is the native tunicate), chiton, seaweed, and kelp.

But my favorite, hands-down, is always the purple sea stars. They're beautiful.