BLOG about PAINTING
Today having some of the lowest tides of the year, we went out to East Sooke Park to look at critters. This is one of our favourite pastimes, one we indulge at least once a year and much more often if possible. The beach at Aylard Farm is a great place for hunting. You can walk right out onto the hard sand to look at the base of the big boulders that litter the beach, though we also usually end up crawling over the more slippery jumbles of rocks, where there are great rafts of mixed seaweed.
Intertidal organisms are wondrous things. Now, these are plants and animals that are normally living in our icy cold sea water. However, thanks to the changing tides, twice a day they get left high and dry for hours at a time. Since they are exposed to the air and often to blistering sun, they have to be able to withstand great variations in humidity, temperature, and salinity. They have a number of interesting adaptations that allow them to do so.
Some, like the seaweeds, are covered with a layer of slippery gel-like slime that helps them to retain moisture. They have also adapted to losing water and simply re-absorb it when the tide comes back in. Some animals literally clam up: They have have calcareous shells that close up, thus trapping moisture inside. There is great variety in these guys, the gastropods. Some have two halves of shell (clams, mussels, oysters, etc.). Some have one and a half shells (jingle shells). Some have one shell (limpets, which pull the shell down tight against the rock; barnacles whose shell is like a mini-volcano that closes with 'doors' at the top; and, of course, snails and whelks). Some have shells that have devolved into eight plates that run down the back of the animal (chitons). And, finally, some have lost their shells entirely and so have to hide in tidepools or under seaweed to save themselves. These last are the real beauties, the nudibranchs, or 'sea slugs'. (Sea slugs, you say? Yech! Believe me. Google these and savour their amazing beauty.)
We love to look at everything - the seastars, the anemones, the tube worms, the colourful encrusting algae that paint the rock a multitude of hues, the sponges, the barnacles that vary from the tiny ones in the splash zone to the giant barnacles three and four inches in diameter... But our very favourites, the ones we prize above all others, are the nudibranchs. You have to be very persistent and very lucky to find them, and we seldom quit poking around before we have found at least one species.
Today we found three different species: the clown nudibranch (which is white with small, bright orange protuberances), the leopard nudibranch (just like the name suggests - beige with brown spots), and the tiny red Rostanga pulchra, which seldom exceeds 4-5mm in length. What finds!
After we had sated ourselves on the wildlife, I hid out of the wind and did a quick sketch of the seastacks at Creyke Point. I'm embarrassed at how out-of-practice I am at doing these little postcards. I had meant to do lots each day during our travels, but so far, I'm doing far more hiking and reading than painting!
