I remember the stupid things, the mood rings..

Bodega Bay is a quiet (very quiet) little town far away from any real civilization. It's north of San Francisco and takes about an hour or so of driving on winding streets through hills of sheep and cows that never seem to end. Studying up there for 10 weeks was kinda frustrating because when we got sick of the nothing-but-american food that our dorm chef made, we had to drive 40 minutes to the nearest fast food (in 'n out) and 50 minutes to any real restaurant food (thai pot). But one of the best things about being out in the middle of nowhere is the scenery. All you could see for miles in any direction was the tumbling green hills, the grandiose rocky coast, and the glassy sheet of blue ocean.

Born to gaze into night skies..

Throughout my time in college taking marine biology classes and going on plenty of field trips, I've been to many rocky intertidal areas along the coast of California. I studied up at Bodega Bay in northern California (where Hitchcock's "The Birds" was filmed, by the way) for a while, and went on trips to a few camping spots all the way up by San Luis Obispo for our fish and invertebrates classes. And of course at Leo Carillo beach which is by Malibu. And seriously, there's so much treasure to find in these places. I've picked a few of the weirder animals we've found to upload that are just freakin' cool.




This is just a common green anemone that is pretty much all over the tidepools, but I picked it to show just how squishy these things are. When the tide goes out, these things curl up into little rubber balls and you can barely see them. And when the tide comes back in, they wave their tentacles in the water. When you step on them they squirt out streams of water that they have stored inside them. I don't think it hurts them, but it's really fun lol. These things don't hurt either, you can touch em and their tentacles stick to your finger, but won't sting you.

A green eel?! Yeah, bet you've never seen one of those.

This thing is so awesome. It's a chiton, and usually they're these boring brown-shelled things that just suck onto rocks and don't budge. But if you take a closer look (probably have to click on it), you can see that this one has all these intricate blue designs carved into its shells. Isn't that amazing? How does a simple chiton grow to have these designs on it? I'm sure someone could get into the scientific evolutionary explanation of it, but to a normal human being, it blows my mind away.

Ever see one of these? Look at its bright green flourescent markings and wavy back hair. Pretty alien, huh? Well, this thing's a nudibranch, basically a sea slug. They're one of my favorite invertebrate animals, and they come in all kinds of psychedelic colors. There's one called the spanish shawl that is bright purple with tufts of bright orange hair growing out of it.

And of course we can't forget the baby sea star. Normal big ones are all over the place and not so fascinating, so I kick it up a notch by trying to find baby ones.

In an octopus's garden in the shade..

Have you ever gone tidepooling? It's one of the craziest experiences you'd ever have (on land, atleast). What you always thought was just a pile of crappy rocks suddenly becomes an alien landscape teeming with wondrous life. In fact, most of these rocky intertidal animals exist nowhere else on earth. The hard part of getting to these things is checking the tide charts and making sure you find a low-low tide that isn't at 4 in the morning.

A few years back on a tidepooling field trip to Leo Carillo beach, I found a small octopus sliming around under a rock. I picked it up and let it wiggle on my palm for a bit before putting it back on the sand and snapping a few pictures. Only after uploading the pictures did I notice that I had found something else. I've seen lots of videos on youtube of the octopus' incredible camouflage ability, but the pictures that I took managed to capture its splendor in a series of snapshots.

It's that brown blob in the middle with tentacles.

Suddenly it already looks more beige-grey..

And then its legs are pretty much transparent.

Pretty cool, huh?