Tidepooling SoCal

Ok, not quite tidepooling all of SoCal, but I did tidepool in SoCal. Flew down to LA for a company holiday party, which just happened to include a tidepooling jaunt to Leo Carillo State Park! Leo Carillo doesn't have too much in the way of straight-up pools, but it does have a nice cobble field with many cool things living there. Friends told me to expect sea hares and octopi, and we in fact found both! I was so excited about the sea hares. They were enormous (for sea slugs), and just plane cool. Other things I could recognize were a bunch of Pisaster ocraceus, some moonglow anemones, and striped shore crabs. Among the things I didn't recognize were lots of anemones, big calcareous hunks of colonial worm colonies, and lots of other stuff. Would love to go back.

Posted on December 6, 2009 02:17 AM by kueda kueda

Observations

Photos / Sounds

What

California Seahare (Aplysia californica)

Observer

kueda

Date

December 2, 2009 02:31 PM PST

Description

Flew down to SoCal for a company holiday party, and part of the festivities involved tidepooling at a minus tide! Yay! We went to Leo Carillo State Park, which has a nice stretch of cobble, where we found many, many California Sea Hares. A lot. And they were so, so big. I was quite excited, and everyone else either hadn't been tidepooling or hadn't been since they were kids, so I had a lot of fun trying to share what little knowledge I could muster on unfamiliar ground, and everyone seemed to have a good time finding squidgy wonders.

Photos / Sounds

What

Lesser Two-spot Octopus (Octopus bimaculoides)

Observer

kueda

Date

December 2, 2009 03:25 PM PST

Description

This was the other thing I was hoping to see at Leo Carillo. This one was itty bitty, but with plenty of chutzpah: it inked, it shot water, it tried to climb out othe dish.

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