True Nature Stories: Wonder Pools

Little Moonglow
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Although I did see footprints in the sand when I got down to the beach, I appeared to be the first tidepooler of the morning at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve on Sunday (not counting the great blue heron and flock of sea gulls). After descending the stairs at Seal Cove (the main entrance was still closed) I headed up the beach and soon spotted movement in one of the pools, some kind of crab.

I wrestled my Nikon out of a canvas Domke shoulder bag, trying not to dump the Panasonic FZ-80 in the process. So much for the Domke, which turns out not to be a very good bag for this kind of work. Along with the FZ-80 for grab shots, I had brought my D800E with a 105/Micro and a small SB-400 flash attached to an SC-29 coiled remote cord. I turned it all on and was promptly greeted by a "card error" flashing in the display.

In the minute or so that it took to sort that out and get the D800 working, the crab had gone to ground, hiding probably in plain sight, but so well-camouflaged that I needed my special x-ray vision to find it again. Even when I was right above it, I found it virtually impossible to make a photograph of the crab, a kelp crab, that would look like anything other than random colors and shapes. Even when it moved out of its hidey-hole of seaweed its camo held up quite well.

I moved on from the kelp crab to a lovely little orange moonglow anemone about the size of a half-dollar, then to another one nearby. By the time I reached the second one, a hermit crab had photobombed it. The crab was in no rush to vacate the premises, so I gently flicked it out of the way. When I finally looked up from my tidepooling I was surprised to see that several people had joined me on the reef. By the time I left, there were probably three-dozen or so people out there. It was nice to have low tide striking at such a reasonable hour, and on a weekend to boot.

The sun made a very brief appearance, dazzling us with brighter colors and a more cheerful atmosphere, but Karl the Fog soon reasserted himself over his briny domain.

As I skimmed across the reef peering into pools I stopped several times to just take in the beauty of them, the wonder of the everyday aliens that share this incredible planet with us. I asked a couple of docents if they'd seen any nudibranchs, and they pointed me back down the reef toward a guy in a distinctively bright orange jacket.

I asked around when I reached him, but no one had a bead on any 'branchs at the moment. As I mosied back toward the beach I spotted a different bright orange creature that I took to be a worm or some kind of new 'branch, but a boy about 10 or 11 years old took one look at the tiny inch-long thing from maybe 10-15 feet away and said it was probably a sea cucumber. Oh, to have laser eyes like that again. I never would have guessed that sea cukes could be so small, and I looked it up when I got home. The kid was absolutely correct.