Granite’s New England Biotope

[MainelyReefer]

-1.66ft tide this morning.  Begging my wife to wake up, buy some hipster potato donuts and let me be a kid in a tide pool!  Hoping this low will expose some usually inaccessible rocks hopefully with a sponge, or an invasive gold star tunicates.  A gersemia rubiformis if I was really pushing it lol.  Maybe an anemone of sorts? Haven’t cleaned the glass in a few months(not super comfortable cleaning acrylic yet) but here is a FTS before collecting.  Check out the tunicates that moved themselves onto the underside of the upper rock on the wall.  Super cool! (Forgot to post this until after I came back lol)

the trip was incredible, I saw 3 rock gunnels, no picture as they are FAST!  now I will try buying one lol. A lobster that scared the crap out of me!  I was moving algae off really large rocks to look beneath as I have read sponges/gersemia can occupy these spaces, and instead a giant lobster 🦞 was there.  He opened his claws as warning.  Too bad I don’t have a lobstering license or else I could have had a swell dinner(pun intended)

Biggest urchin I’ve seen yet 2”+

and these nudibranch were everywhere

I did grab three encrusted rocks to make a richer environment for the Catalina, who instantly dove into the new rock work and ate worms I didn’t even see lol