Tidepool Walk with Roy Houston
 


San Felipe, Baja, Mexico
ROY HOUSTON’S TIDE POOL WALK
Review and photos by Marti Freeman
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”.