We had some of the lowest tides that the Puget Sound has seen in nearly 20 years this week. Today, at 11:48am, our low tide was at -4.2! So we headed over to Fort Ward beach, on the south end of the island, to see what we could find. (I love the unique Bainbridge beachcombing experience - with the ferry in the background.)The weather (shocker!) was crummy. But that is actually a good thing during a very low tide, because the blazing sun is stressful for the exposed sea creatures. See - we can even find something positive to say about all these lousy clouds.
Here are just a few of the fun things that we saw today:
A bright orange sea cucumber.
A crab (alive) hiding in the eel grass. You can't tell in the picture, but this crab was actually in the middle of mating. Quite the biology lesson for the kids.
Adana is obsessed with the color orange, so she loved this orange sea star.
The sea stars seemed to come in every color of the rainbow.
I loved this blue one.
This seaweed is called Turkish Towel. It was all over the beach.
Ahhh . . . Turkey . . .
The Sunflower Starfish were so cool with all their many legs.
They are also quite fast (for a sea star.)
Adana found this (dead) crab on the beach and refused to let go of it. She carried this smelly carcass around all morning. I'm a mean mom, though, and refused to let her bring it in my car.
7 comments:
This is AWESOME! That would have been so cool. You are a nice mommy, for letting her carry around that dead carcass! Can we say disinfectant wipes?
cool! was this Lytle?
That looks like so much fun!!! I think I should venture to the beach once this summer, even though I hate the sand! The boys would love it. You are a fabulous Mom!
Tidepooling was my favorite thing about living near the beach in SoCal (well, it came in a close second to "watching surfer dudes," but don't tell my kids that). I miss it *tons*. I still can't believe that here one must pay $$ to touch sand.....
I found a dead crab in the middle of the road in Bang Bua Thong, Nonthaburi, Thailand. I stopped on my bike,and went back to pick it up. It was pretty cool, I don't think my companion liked it though! Oh well, you can't please everyone.
We couldn't find any orange starfish out there! Rats!
Wendy - they were over by the slimy rocks, partially covered in seaweed. (Helpful, huh?) :-)
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