May 18, 2007

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  We headed two miles down the road to Slip Point.   In all the tourist books we've read it says that this has superb tidal pools.  We've gone to this beach about 8-15 x.    But we weren't overly impressed.  They just seemed like all the other tidal pools.  Today we finally planned the visit for a very low tide. And found out why it is so well advertised.  It was spectacular.   We saw over 100 different starfish, at least 3 varietys of sea anemone's.  Two varietys of sea cucumbers--something I'd never seen before though I've lived around the beach all my life.  Two varietys of live sea urchins--neither of which do I think I've ever seen alive.   Just incredible. 

  These were our first three starfish.  We were soooo excited when we saw these.  And then laughed at ourselves later when we realized we'd found over 100 of them.

  

  A live sea urchin.  This one is held upside down so we could see its teeth.  Once again we were thrilled to find this guy.  And then it got so we found literally hundreds of them.  We had a hard time stepping some times with ot stepping on them.  If you look in all of the rest of my pictures almost every one has purple spines sticking out. 

  

  A little baby starfish--note the purple spine in the right corner of yet another urchin.  Oh and the bottom of the picture too.  *snicker*

  

  The underside of a purple starfish--showing the kids all its little feet.

  

  Kaylin who worked up the courage to pet one.  If you've never touched one its rather like touching sand paper, slightly warm sand paper.

  

  And then my favorite find of the day.  This is taken through two and a half feet of water, so the picture isn't quite as clear as I hoped, but still turned out remarkably well.  These are red sea urchins.  They were just beautiful.  I have NEVER seen them alive or dead.    Notice all the many, many purple sea urchins, and the skeletons of quite a few as well.  (aka shells)

  

  This little guy was a first as well.  There was a trio of people from B.C. who research marine biology.  They were able to identify the first guy I found like this as a sea cucumber.  We found quite a few after that once we knew what we were looking at.  The people were quite friendly, and they reassured us, that they learned/saw something new each time they came to the beach as well.  They said there is 10,000 species of sealife in the Northern Pacific Coast.   I believe it!

  

  I took a detour away from the kids and found this HUGE collection of starfish.  That was when we stopped counting.  *sniggers*  The green circle thing on top of one of the oranges one is a sea anemone.

  

  And this is a close up of a rather gigantic sea anemone.  In the very deep tidal pool we also got to see the flowery ones, but somehow I missed taking a picture of it.     Oh there are if you look small cretons as well.  And I KNOW I'm spelling those wrong .   They are the small black things with a white pattern down the middle.  There's at least 3 of them in the picture. 

  

  All in all it was a spectacular visit to the coast.  And in my opinion worth about 3 months of sit down school. 

  • 6:57 pm
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