Life on the Outer Coast

Tuesday
Took Aaron, Melissa and Ryan out to Three Entrance Bay for another search for Purple Anemones. The weather wasn't quite as friendly as yesterday's adventure. There was a small craft advisory for the outside and the wind was as advertised. Eastern Channel was unpleasant, but okay. Once around Cape Burnnof the water was calm. One urchin prospecting idea from Monday was to try to pull up a Macrocystis to grab the urchins from the bottom. It was a rather hopeless task, the kelp stalks stretch, and do anything but break off near the base. The last time I was here I had four children under ten in the skiff ready for a nice morning playing in the sand and building shore crab zoos. I guess its been a few years.
Things looked much the same, except the presence of Trifolium in the upper beach areas. The Pedicularis verticillata seems to be holding its own at this point. I'll have to add this spot to my list of beaches needing some volunteer invasive plant removal.
We spent a couple of hours on the outside of the island searching for urchins and gathering chitons, mussels and miscellaneous other invertebrates for study. What struck me was the color of the rock. There was a beautiful, in not gaudy mixture of pink coralline algae, orange and green sponges. The low intertidal was very dissected with deep cuts and deep pools that made it a little challenging to get around. Alaria marginata and Katharina tunicata were both particularly abundant at this site.
Found one fragrant Campanula rotundifolia still blooming. Collected seed from Dodecatheon pulchellum and Vicia gigantea. The Empetrum was quite thick and luxurious on the rocks above the intertidal on both the west and east side of the island. Not much in the way of mushrooms and didsn't find any Pseudocyphellaria anomola.
No purple urchins were found, but we did find a few old spines in the shell beach.
The wind was building to the point where we could feel it on the west side of the island, so we headed back to town. Took some nice spray over the bow beating our way down the channel.
Saw one Tufted puffin at the cape, one humpback and lots of marauding sea otters.