These are what Mission Bells look like when they've gone to seed! Saw so many crazy seed pods today.
One of several species in this photo.
You don't have to put on a silly suit, breath through a tube, and fall through 100 ft of water to see scenes like this, and yet I did!
The rock crab on the left seemed like it was mating (it was holding on to another crab with its rear legs). The crab on the right seemed to have a problem with that.
If you've seen the jellies at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, you've seen this guy. This was a smaller, stupider example, who seemed dead set on ramming himself into a clump of eel grass, repeatedly.
I went snorkeling in Tomales Bay seeking this slug ... and I found it! So awesome.
These were interesting. They were very large, the tube being about 10 cm tall, sticking straight up out of the mud. I saw many tubes, all coated with the same white sponge (tunicate?), but this was the only worm I saw that was out of its tube.
The only other time I've seen B. californica was in pretty much exactly the same spot, with Gary.
Hermissenda crassicornis. I always hope to find these when showing new people around the tidepools. Despite being somewhat common, they're one of the most spectacular animals in a whole state full of spectacular sights.
As usual, very common at Pigeon, though I didn't sea any of the bright red morph. It was cool seeing these in the wild and then seeing them later in the aquarium.
Shift said her boss was once bit by a pelican.
Sea lions are practically a menace at the Breakwater.
Lots of Brandt's Cormorants nesting at the end of the Breakwater.
Shift found this one!. Aeollidia papillosa
This is insanely common along the coast, so I finally keyed it out.
This was my first time seeing this brid that I can remember. Feeding on bugs in the low branches of some eucalyptus. Kind of drab overall, but the white eye bar is pretty distinctive. We were happy to see something interesting on a day that was almost exclusively finches and tree swallows.
A real stunner, and fairly common along the Bald Ridge trail!
This was growing fairly abundantly along certain parts of the Bald Ridge Trail, though this was the best pic I got.
