Today Was Like This

July 4th. I think it was a lot wetter out at Rialto than it was in town. Eagles flapped by now and then, silently; and called out of the clouds, invisible.

Rialto Beach, Low Tide, Not Much Surf (Click for larger image.)

This time there were a lot of bryozoans and almost no hydroids. Plenty of different seaweeds. A lot a lot of small giant kelp (not shown). A few bits of bull kelp.

The bryozoan (moss animal) Flustrella (appearances notwithstanding, a colonial animal) (Click for larger image.) Alaria ; Codium (Click for larger image.)

The English names of these things are uniformly either completely artificial ('branch-spined bryozoan') or downright ugly ('dead man's fingers', not shown). 'Winged kelp' (Alaria) sounds ok, but I ask you: what kind of name is 'small giant kelp'? I think it's time to try to shove some proper binomial nomenclature into my poor old brain. Macrocystis integrifolia, for example.

There were a lot of people out, considerin' the conditions. Not exactly a surprise. It's the 4th of July. Summer's here, the time is right for dancing on the beach.♬