Category Archives: Sea life

Totem Salmon book cover

Tick tock, repeat …

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Summer is butting in on the tail end of Spring. The cherries from Eastern Washington are coming to market early by weeeks and our rhodies have dropped their blossoms.

I guess it’s a good thing, but it’s making me calendar nervous. We have a long list for the warm season that involves a lot of yard and house maintenance and are booked for an upcoming vacation to California’s Lost Coast. That’s the extreme NW coast after the scenic Hwy 1 gives up and heads inland. You want a 4 wheel drive, or at least something with good clearance. The area lacks the population to get much money for road upgrades out of the state coffers. An old friend lives there and led efforts to restore a King Salmon run in one of the few rivers in the NW that was never damned.

The book is Totem Salmon by Freeman House and I highly recommend it.

Time to go, I’m feeling that clock pressure…

Ron

Seaweed and sunflower star on right.

Seaweed and sunflower star on right.

Today, we let our family & friends on Facebook know about our little blog site… It’s not all that far along, but by mentioning it I’m hoping it will keep our “feet to the fire” to continue to improve it.

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Mottled Sea Star (Evasterias troschelii)

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Sally, James Kelsey and Jennifer examining the life exposed by an extreme low tide in Southworth WA–June 15, 2011.

Also on my mind today is an excellent series of articles running in the Kitsap Sun on the problems of Puget Sound. It is excellent piece of work and should be widely noted. If you go to the Kitsap Sun link above and want more, search for “Puget Sound” on that site to find and read several other articles, including today’s Sea life on the bottom of Sound is in trouble. 

The pictures of starfish and the tide pool gazers, Jennifer and friends Sally Anderson and James Kelsey, were taken during an extreme low tide around the Washington State Ferry dock in Southworth, WA. This dock is also our usual route to Seattle.

It was an amazing treat to visit this low tide with Sally as she was able to provide critter names and a naturalist’s knowledge of the habits of much of what we saw that day!

Thanks Sally.

 

Photo of a Sunflower Star during a minus tide at Southworth Washington

Sunflower star (Pycnopodia helianthoides), our largest “starfish”