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A Jar’s Journey: Wrack Line Mystery
Closed tight, this empty glass jar floated as far as it could, washing ashore when it ran out of fetch on a cobble covered Oregon strand. It arrived in a beach cast of Velella velella, real-life...
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A Twist of Serpula Tubes
Larval calcareous tubeworms start out life in the plankton- it’s a badge of honor among tide pool inhabitants. Once they settle, young worms secrete calcareous tubes within which they reside for the...
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A Starfish, Pisaster, Hanging On
Pisaster ochraceus. Starfish took a hit from sea star wasting syndrome starting in 2013. The disease persists, but healthy Pisaster are now in the majority on my home beaches. I found this five-armed...
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Splash!
On an early morning back in April 2018 I thought I should get low for some great photos of this backlit red with the oncoming swash. Two minutes after taking this shot, I got a splash. THURSDAY’S...
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Peaceful Patterns of Pelvetiopsis and Fucus on a High Reef
A surf swept reef is a boisterous place. Crashing waves elicit profound vigilance and the footing is treacherous. A spill will earn you a painful barnacle inflicted wound. To let your mind wander to...
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The Colorful Painted Anemone, Urticina crassicornis
A beam of morning sunlight illuminates just a flicker of red beneath a carpet of Ulva. Should you peel away the protective blades to find out what’s resting under the leafy salad? If its the first time...
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Paths of Anticipation and Discovery
A path to the shore is a descent of anticipation and discovery. Steep scrambles and gentle trails alike afford opportunities to examine the eternal questions confronting the beach enthusiast. What...
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A Window to the Surf Zone and Beyond
From the shore Preacher’s Cave is an inscrutable eyeball in the supralittoral fringe.* From inside, it’s a window to the surf zone and beyond. I featured my favorite surf zone photo from inside a cave...
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The Changeable Rocky Intertidal: 2013 v. 2018
The last five years have been a period of extremes for Pacific Northwest rocky intertidal ecosystems. We’ve all heard about sea star wasting syndrome, and persistent warm sea temperatures known as the...
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Giant Barnacles, Balanus nubilus, Generous Intertidal Hosts
Balanus nubilus is the Pacific Northwest’s biggest intertidal barnacle. Large ones are about the size of a human fist. They’re big enough to add surface area to crowded intertidal rocks. As they grow,...
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Standing Out in Mytilus trossulus
Patches of shiny black or blue-black Mytilus trossulus* show up every once in a while. The patches don’t last long. I’ve never seen an established bed. Their vulnerability to predatory starfish and...
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Pollicipes, Magical in the Morning
Sunlight penetrates the mouth of an intertidal cave, illuminating the goose-neck barnacles within. The morning rays particularly light up hemoglobin in the barnacle’s blood. Lamb and Hanby (2005) make...
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Along the Winter Drift Line
Winter is a season of strong winds and big surf, forces that lend a seasonal flavor to the drift line. The strongest signal on my home beaches arrives in the form of bull kelp- drifting masses cast up...
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Beachcombing theoutershores: a 2018 Retrospective
This concludes theoutershores’ sixth year. I wrote 26 posts, including this one, and uploaded a bunch of images from the Oregon coast. I even added a few images from Orcas Island, one of the San Juan...
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A View From the 2018 Wrack Line Through My Eyes
2018 was full of drift treasures. Some had human origins. Others were from rocky intertidal, subtidal, pelagic, estuarine, and terrestrial sources. Unravelling the stories of marine drifters, at least...
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The Curves and Colors of California Mussels
California mussels, Mytilus californianus, are a fixture on Pacific North America’s rocky intertidal shores. They form beds of hundreds to millions of mussels. They’re so common and crowded it’s easy...
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Morning Mirror
Salmon-tinged clouds and a morning mirror make for a pretty shot. I’m going to use this one, I guess it’s a seascape, to feature my beach landscape vocabulary along with a few contextual annotations....
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A Cockle Shell’s Shadows
A shadow over the cup of an upturned cockle shell. Shadows also set off the fluting along the margin. This is the shell of the heart cockle, Clinocardium nuttallii. I like the shifting influence of...
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Closeups from the Cobbles
I have reasons to avoid cobbled shorelines. Legitimate reasons. They’re frequently steep, and they don’t hold a lot of material from the drift. Driftline treasures that do stick are apt to fall out of...
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A Deep and Shallow History from a Nearby Shore
This uneven exploration sweeps from the historical shallows of my private connections to the the intertidal, to the depths of the remote Miocene, and back. Better said, I’m taking this opportunity to...
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