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?