In the Land of Giants

Yesterday was fantastic, even though it started far too early. Low tide was at 5:30, so we skipped breakfast, and headed down to the Lighthouse Beach.
At first glance, I was a bit confused. Where was the endless sea of tidepools that I'd been promised? The trick is, they're over on the other side of the light house. It was a fun scampering-over-rocks hike on the way back, but on the way back, when the tide had already.

We stumbled upon a lot of giants out in these pools.

This is pycnopodia helianthoides, also known as a "sun star". I didn't get a good scale in this picture, but to give you an idea, the center part of this star alone is about the width of the span of my hand.

Nice rock, right?

Nope. It's a chiton. Secretly. The whole time. Cryptochiton stelleri, also known as the Gumboot Chiton, was all over these rocks. Side note - whenever we'd find one of these, I'd start humming Come Together.
Ok, this ones a little hard to explain. See the whorl of the shell? The brown part there is the snail, poking out a little bit, and the green part attached to it is called the operculum. When the snail retracts fully, the operculum fits perfectly into the opening of the shell, and wha-bam! It's water tight! It was one thing to hear about it in class, but so fun to see it in action!
This was a crab. I just liked this picture lots. "I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. Demille".
These are the tidepools. That bridge goes right to the island with the lighthouse in it, as was shown in the first picture. However, it's condemned, so no luck there. I loved watching the fog roll in.
Fish heads fish heads, roly poly fish heads!

These are two separate sea anemone clone colonies. That empty space in the middle is where they duke it out and refuse to let the other clone win territory. Sweet, right?

These cormorants were nesting on the plateau above the pools. They made strange barking noises that I kept thinking belonged to a dog or a sea lion. It was fun to watch them bringing back sticks and such for building their nests.

When the tide came in, it brought with it a lonely seal pup. It kept calling out for someone to love it, which was super sad, but we enjoyed showing it some affection. As soon as we got out of sight, the mom came back! We're pretty sure that she left the baby to go feed, then waited until the scary humans had left before she came back to nurse the pup. I didn't get close enough for any especially great pictures, but others in the group did.

So, Jason tried to get close to take a good picture. He was wading through the water, when the mother seal started moving. We all started yelling at him to watch her, and he scrambled to do so. In the tussle, he flooded his boots. See how they're sagging down at his ankles? That isn't supposed to happen. :)

So, this might be my favorite part of this whole trip thusfar. The tide was coming in, and getting back to the beach we'd come from was turning into a rock climbing adventure. The guys who'd already gotten over started a bit of a bucket brigade, passing those of us behind them (mostly girls) from person to person until we were safe on the beach.

I know it's a silly thing to get teary eyed about, but it actually meant a lot to me. I'd been fretting about falling, or getting stuck, and I really felt safe with them. Josh talked me through the best way to get around the bend, Spencer pulled me up from a surge channel, Micheal got me safely down the side of the incline, and Sam led me over rocks through the deep murky water to the beach.

It was kinda like one of those cheesy team-building exercises that they make you do to get to know people in a group, except that this wasn't scripted. These guys are just genuinely good eggs. They're being especially kind about my recent injury (keep reading for details).

Ok, NOW for today. We went to Cape Arago, a couple miles further down the beach. I'm somewhat ashamed to say that I wasn't feeling especially adventurous, so I didn't go to the harder to reach pools, and I missed out on some interesting specimens. Here's a few of my favorites.

These are called Sea Sacs - halosaccion glandiforme. Dr. B refers to them as "fingerlike". I had tons and tons of fun squishing the water out of them.... good entertainment for 6 a.m.
Remember my other post about tidepool johnnys? Here's another one. It's a different color, because the tidepool is a different color. Neat, huh?
Here's another one! See it? It's right next to the close anemone. That anemone is closed because it's eating.
This seastar is called a BATSTAR! I want to write a short novel about a VAMPIRE batstar - a vampire that turns into a batstar instead of a normal bat.

.... it's still in the works.
Ok, MOST RANDOM THING EVER. As we were heading back, I ran into Lettie Young! Lettie is more a friend of Chrysta (my little sister) than myself, but it was still fun to see someone from The Dalles! A bit of a shock though - I'd more or less forgotten that I was in Oregon, as I'm here with all of my Utahn friends, in an area of Oregon that I've never really explored before.

So, Michael caught a dungeness crab, and I decided to be snarky and tell him the gender. I was wrong. So I turned it on its back to prove it to myself, and when I went to turn it back over, I let my finger get in its claws.

So, in case my idiotic, self-righteous behavior wasn't bad enough, I was now stuck with a crab on my finger, that was boring down with more pressure than I knew any crab could. I can't explain how much it hurt, I'm not sure if I've ever really felt that kind of pain. I actually thought for a second that my finger might be pinched off. I felt the pincers right down to the bone, TIGHT, and I felt the skin breaking as the pincers moved back and forth. It would've been better if it had been a sharp blade, but it was a blunt, serrated edge, forcing its way between the bones.

In a word, ouch.

On top of this, I had to keep my mouth shut and not let all the cool guys around me (especially Michael, who I'd just so stupidly tried to impress....ugh) know how much pain I was in. So, I quickly reached down with my other hand to pry off the pincer.

So, of course, the crab grabbed that finger too.

I. Was. Mortified. All I could think was what a blow this was to my pride, and how much I was in need of help. I didn't have the guts to ask, and I was to busy clenching my teeth and trying to not panic anyways.

Luckily, Michael came to the rescue. My second-trapped finger came out easily, but the first one, not so much. It took him a while to get it off too.

Once it was off, I shamefacedly turned to him and said thanks, and he said "you should grab them from behind, like this."

.... yeah..... thanks. UGH I'm dumb.

On the plus side, people have been being really sweet. I've been trying not to whine about it and add to my already tarnished reputation, but I also really wanted to get back and clean out this sand-filled, crab infected cut. I got an Ernie and Bert band-aid out of the deal! And the guys have been really sweet about asking if I'm okay. Which only makes it worse, because I know they must know how DUMB I am...

Even better, we write journal entries about what happens on our field trips. Jason's scramble for safety was the topic of everyone's journals yesterday. Apparently my incident is what was popular today. Who knows what'll happen tomorrow?

Oh! Also, I might've seen a whale today. I'm not totally sure, 'cuz there wasn't a dorsal fin. It was too big to be a seal, but it might have been two swimming tail-to-nose? I'm scared to really stand by that statement, because I definitely made enough of a fool of myself today.