Life on the Outer Coast

I've had a few posts planned this spring about trips and what is blooming when, but they don't seem to be materializing just from thinking about writing them. Strange.

I did have the opportunity to go to Three Entrance Bay on Friday with Scott Harris and Sandra Lindstrom (visiting phycologist). We had a couple of short hours on the island so that Sandra could collect taxa of interest to her and I could soak up as much information as possible. I need a seaweed refresher a bit more often than once every 4 or 5 years.
My eyes were pretty focused on the algae and my ears on the sounds of a Common loon, winter wren and a Varied thrush or two. I'm almost embarrassed to to say that I hardly noticed any invertebrates, yes there were black turbans, a gumboot chiton, green anemones, ochre & sunflower stars and a black katy, but I'm pretty sure that another person would have noticed many more. My eyes were feasting on the chlorophyll rich kingdom. The seaweeds look so lush this early in the year, that it was hard to see anything else. There wasn't herring spawn in that bay or outer coast, so it was easy to see all the features of the blades.
A few algal highlights for me was tasting the Alaria marginata (excellent), it seems like it would be a nice complement to the black seaweed. Alaria has the added feature that each blade is larger and may not be in as high of demand. Another was the Tokidadendron bullatum, a delicate little red alga which tends to get beat up a bit over the season, so early is best. One deeper tide pool had the sides covered with Monostroma grevillei (Sea cellophane) and the center with large tufts of Palmeria mollis and coral seaweeds.
The photo on the right is a bit odd, but shows the iridescence of Mazzaella phyllocarpa, a red alga. It is probably relatively common, but isn't so easy to notice except when the light/angle is right.
Crowberry (Empetrum nigrum) was blooming on the rocks.