This little flatfish, one of those pesky pleuronectids, the righteye flounders, was just a babe, washed up as so much sea wrack when I noticed its perky eyeballs protruding from the smooth, featureless surface of a sea of swash zone sand.
The experts I consulted believe it’s a juvenile starry flounder, or maybe a curlfin sole. Such a fish, patrolling soft bottoms from the intertidal to depths exceeding 1,500 feet would spend much of its life, a life on the tightrope between predator and prey, concealed in vast negative space.
A drop off to the anemones in the distance, into enigmatic negative space, adds drama to a limpet on the edge.
If you’re curious about the limpet, it’s probably Lottia pelta. There are other possibilities, and that’s the way I like it.