True Nature Stories: Forest to Reef

Hilton's Aeolid (Phidiana hiltoni)

Looking for an excuse to drive up to Mt. Tam with my DSLR gear, I combined a little mushroom-hunting with swapping out my trail camera batteries, as well as visiting Duxbury Reef during yesterday afternoon's low tide.

Climbing the hill toward my trail cams I found a large fruiting of bear's head fungus (Hericium abietis) jammed under a stout and nearly prostrate bay laurel branch. The forest didn't seem particularly bursting with fungi though, and the duff was surprisingly dry. Nevertheless, I found a few sparse specimens to photograph out along the north end of West Ridgecrest Road.

From there I coasted downhill toward Bolinas Lagoon and got out onto Duxbury Reef well before the 3:30 p.m. low tide. There were only a few other people out tidepooling -- until about 3 o'clock, when a large group of folks showed up at once. I went over to see what they were finding and was envious of their sharp eyes when I saw that one guy had collected a couple of cool nudibranchs that I had not already seen, plus a tiny six-rayed sea star and one other tiny starfish. Sadly, I don't think anyone on the reef saw even a single ochre sea star, which was a common fixture of our tidepools before they were struck down by sea star wasting syndrome.

The guy had collected his prizes in two small plastic containers, and I hoped in vain that he would return them to a pool so I could photograph them in a natural setting. Although that was the eventual plan, I wanted to be somewhere else for the sunset and left the reef while he was still showing them around. Interestingly, there was a California Acamedy of Sciences guy there who asked the young man to find him when it was time to release his captives since there were considerations to be made about how and where to do that.