So…it was a holiday season full of catastrophes and family emergencies for the residents of my house. It was a scary ride over an unpredictable landscape. But happily  the moon decided to proceed with the previously scheduled tides,  as planned. Therefore  New Years Day was one of the lowest tides of the year. A beach near where I live has a nice assortment of tide pools to look at.  They  generally contain the usual suspects: live sea anemones, starfish. pelicans, and sea gulls along with the spiky remains of sea urchins, and craw fish. Not too much else turns up, as a rule, except this year we saw some nudibranch! At least I think that’s what they were; (also called sea slugs. But I didn’t think anyone would keep reading if I played the sea slug card ahead of the nudibranch card. )  Below is a little video documentation of that momentous event. I admit it is not the most exciting footage you will ever see. In fact, an argument could be made against deciding to post it at all. But if you had as crazy and scary a holiday season as I did, and also had attended as many underpopulated low tides as I have, you would understand that it was a kind of a thrilling running in to this odd creature. So why don’t we all pretend, as we watch it, that it is one of those incredibly colorful, and exciting nudibranchs like we see in the photo to the left. Just imagine the vibrant colors as I invite you come with me now to the magical world of the nudibranch at low tide.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 10:44 and is filed under blog post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.