Chasing the Light
I chase those fleeting moments on the coast when evening sun brings textures in sand and rock and water to life. During the day I scout...
Stinging Christmas Trees
This “Christmas tree” attached to kelp that washed up on the beach is an animal colony known as a hydroid. Though they look like plants,...
The Unusual Suspects
When I go tidepooling I expect to see anemones and crabs, starfish and sculpins. I hope to spot a nudibranch species that’s new to me,...
Deep Time in the Tidelands
"An abstract, intellectual understanding of deep time comes easily enough—I know how many zeros to place after the 10 when I mean...
The Moon Above
When I travel into the tidelands, the moon is often on my mind. Without the moon, there would be no sea slugs attacking hydroids, no...
To Boldly Go To New Oceans
Between tidepooling sessions I’ve been reading about Proxima b, a newly discovered planet orbiting the star closest to our sun. Good...
Stranger than Science Fiction
Novelist John Steinbeck's best friend was Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist and pioneering ecologist who published Between Pacific Tides....
Wondrous Slug
The first sea slug I saw at the ocean's edge was an opalescent nudibranch, Hermissenda crassicornis. I have since spotted many nudibranch...
A Universe in Every Pool
“It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.” —John Steinbeck Tidepooling at night is...
Dendronotus Density Dispatch
Today at Haystack a startling abundance of nudibranchs in the genus Dendronotus appeared. The name Dendronotus is derived from dendrite,...
