ROY HOUSTON’S TIDE POOL
WALK
Review and photos by Marti Freeman
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Click on Photo to See Album |
Saturday morning my husband and I awoke early to be sure
to be on time for the 7:30 am Tide Pool Walk led by Dr.
Roy Houston who is a Professor of Marine Biology at Loyola
Marymount University in Los Angeles. The one hour drive
to the Tide Pool site was beautiful and we joined 24 other
early risers right on time. We had met Dr. Houston at
the San Felipe Title Company (better known around the
pool as “the bookstore”) when he gave a little
talk about his book Northwestern Gulf of California and
Adjacent Desert. I have a tendency to overdo my sharing
tales so I’ll just say the book is wonderful with
its incredible wealth of information about the marine
life and desert life in our little part of the world (San
Felipe).
At this point I can hardly wait to revisit the tide pool.
The beauty and abundant wealth of marine life is hard
to over state. With Dr. Houston helping us identify our
finds and explain the marine life’s habits we came
away amazed at the little known treasure we have “living”
so close to us. We saw anemones, sea bubble, several types
of sea worms, chiton, fly-speck cerith, pink mouth murex,
coralline shells, baby octopi, ghost shrimp, several types
of small crabs, a 24-legged sea star (we incorrectly call
them star fish), a sea cucumber, a toadfish called a midshipman,
tower shells, theodoxus (which you might call a baby shell
not realizing that a little living thing is inside that
shell), cone shells and a variety of seaweed. There was
a lot more to be seen but I would get so excited about
something I saw that I’d miss the next great find
while I stayed and ooohed and aaahed over the last great
find.
In the pictures accompanying this little review you’ll
see a beautifully “painted” rock. When I first
saw it my very uneducated eye found it hard to believe
it was a natural happening of this habitat area. I pointed
to the gold “paint” decorating this rock and
found out the gold was worms. OMG my granddaughter would
say and with that I will just say one more thing. The
next time Dr. Houston gives a talk at the bookstore or
offers a tide pool tour I promise you won’t be disappointed
that you put the tour on your calendar of “Things
to do in San Felipe”.
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