I visited this marine reserve with my sister Laura on March 4 of this year. We hadn’t picked a particular time, and we arrived in the late afternoon. We saw seals playing out near where waves were breaking over rocks and picked up colorful bits of seaweed to arrange for photographs. Bay Nature recently ran a story on the park and the tidepools, and with the nearly full moon this weekend was a great one for some very low tides.
This morning Christine and i arrived at the reserve a couple hours after a -1 ft low tide, just fifteen minutes after sunrise. It was dramatically different.
I shot up the remaining black and white (from our Yosemite trip?), switching to the telephoto to shoot the seals out on the rocks. No tripod, Kodak TMAX 100 (TMX 135-36) speed film, dawn. I’ve no great hopes. [This will be Roll2006.06] Eventually i switched to 200 speed antique color film i bought on eBay at least three years ago. (Kodak Select Royal Gold 200, 24 exp) [This will be Roll2006.07] The dawn light was filtered by the marine layer, so colors were muddied. I fiddled with my circular polarizer as well, but that eats light, too.
The main joy was to watch the darting of the small fish, the tide pool sculpins. There were some lovely giant green sea anemone and the notable aggregating anemone, clonal colonies apparently battle each other. I didn’t see any examples of large colony boundaries, though. Hermit crabs were easily apparent, but i didn’t see any starfish or sea urchins. (I did see a lovely bit of sea urchin shell.)
The seaweeds were the delight — i wish i had a better guide. There were bulbulous bright green clusters that were quite interested even when out of the water.
Princeton, Half Moon Bay
9 July 2006 – 10 July 2006
37.5000° N, 122.4833° W
2006-07-09 04:00 PDT Moonset
2006-07-09 04:15 PDT -0.99 feet Low Tide
2006-07-09 05:56 PDT Sunrise
2006-07-09 11:33 PDT 4.09 feet High Tide
