Tidepooling

Spring is a glorious time for tidepooling on the Oregon coast.  Spring offers the lowest tides of the year.   We went to Bob Creek near Florence, which has great tidepooling and mysterious sea caves to explore.  Jasper was in heaven.  He spent hours on the beach looking into every puddle for wonders.  This year, we found hundreds of hermit crabs.  We wonder, could we possibly have not noticed them in previous years? Or was it a bumper year for hermit crabs?  Every year, Jasper counts this as one of his greatest adventures.  We use the tide tables from the Hatfield Marine Science Center to find an auspicious day for tidepooling, and we consult this list for great spots to tidepool.

Mussels and barnacles.

Pacific goose barnacle.

A chiton- strange beings with no heads!

Ochre sea star and giant green anemones. (The anemones are closed.)

We watched as these three funny sculpin fish simultaneously crawled out of the water and sheltered behind a rock- just before an enormous wave came in.  The discs in the sand are sea anemones.

Jasper wanted pictures of lots of hermit crabs!

A ghost shrimp lurks here.

Purple shore crab.

Chiton.

Silverweed.

A marine isopod.

Visiting a sea cave.

Thousands of marine isopods live in the sea caves.  They look like pillbugs but are about
 an inch  or more long.