A trip to the Intertidal

Over the last four weeks, I have attempted to explore the shoreline here as often as possible. The weather of late has been preventing me from enjoying it fully, but in due time I am certain to be back wondering the tide pools. As I am still waiting to get the rest of my dive gear and do not yet have any flippers, I have not yet gotten in the water to explore. I have focused on the intertidal, that wonderful place exposed only when the tide flows back to sea. The shoreline here is made up of several different types of rock and it is interesting that the life on these surfaces differs depending on the bedrock type. The cliff sides are covered in tall trees, hanging on to what sediment they can. On one side the cliff is bedrock, and the trees rest comfortably so long as the bedrock is not undermined by the ocean. In many places the underneath of the cliff is carved into caverns by the erosion of the water. On the other side, the bedrock appears mostly below the water and the cliffs are loose sand, which often can be heard in mini landslides in the distance.

The side containing the bedrock cliffs tends to be less exciting on low tides than the other. Aside from the occasional pool, so choked full of algae you can barely see anything, there is not many places above water for life to hide from the ever present and abundant seabirds. What life is here is bored into the rock face, making it difficult for many predators to snatch them up. Most of the life appears to be in the macroalgae below water. Hopefully with some new dive gear soon, I will be exploring this world as well.

Some visual proof I am here by the way. I will try to smile more when I am not thinking that it is a bad idea to set the camera on a wet rock. Anyway, the other side of the beach is far more interesting from an intertidal point of view. There are numerous deep pools and loose cobbles and boulders that creatures can hide in. The depth of the pools is also shallow enough that rubber boots are generally all that is needed, though I spent the first three weeks in my hiking boots, jumping from one exposed bedrock patch to another. When you first enter the area there are signs of life immediately, with rock oysters, black nerites (snails), and large limpets (bigger than a toonie).

The upper area has a smaller diversity of life. There are no octopus for certain! There are a lot of snails, small hermit crabs running about in pools filled with coralline algae (sort of pink, turf like stuff in many of the photos), and under the boulders in this area, you can find lots of small porcelain crabs. These guys are very delicate, despite their brutish looks and large claws. They eat mostly plankton and wait under cobbles and boulders for high tide before venturing out to feed.

Another crab I found high up on the shore was this black-fingered crab (very original) who was not happy to have his rock removed from him. His favorite prey, the black nerites are very abundant in the high area as you can see behind him, all over the rocks.

As I ventured farther from the shore, the assemblage of creatures underneath and clinging to the bottom of the rocks became increasingly more diverse. Two of my favorites are this violet chiton, whose velvety mantle wraps up over the shelled valves that protect the main body. The other is the aptly named painted prawn, who sometimes refused to acknowledge that their roof had been lifted.

 There are a large number of seastars here and can often be found under rocks as well. The cushion star is often firmly attached to the bottom of the rock (see below) but on the bedrock, there are such interesting finds as the beautiful gray and brown 11 armed seastar and the mottled brittle star. There are numerous types of brittle stars, but they are photosensitive and upon exposure to light, they quickly drag themselves under rocks and into crevices. I was lucky to get this shot at all!

By far the one that took me by surprise was this black fellow, the shield limpet. He was not feeling photogenic that day and refused to get in an angle that did not allow any glare, so I apologize for the bad picture. Unlike the conventional limpet, the mantle covers the entire animal and they stay in the water rather than pressing their shell (obviously impossible) against rocks to form a water tight seal, preventing them from drying out at low tide.

Last week I discovered another crab species (I believe bringing my total up to about 8) which is barely even in the intertidal. While wondering farther down the shore, there is an area with large bedrock outcrops that rise above the tide line. In the damp crevices of these rocks hides a semi-terrestrial species that is exposed to air for almost half the day! The purple clawed shore crab wedges itself as deep into the rock as possible to keep it from being plucked out by the abundant shorebirds. Sure enough, after traveling all over the rocky outcrops, if their was a moist crevice deep enough in the bedrock, there were numerous crabs hiding till it is safe to venture out and forage.

I know I spend a lot of time talking about crabs, but lets face the truth, it doesn't surprise anyone. My favorite crab so far has to be the triangle crab. Often times I would almost miss spotting these guys when I flipped rocks, but they always seem to start moving out of the sand the moment I start to put the rock back down. They look basically like a rock from above, tucking their legs and claws underneath. This male also did not want to get into the right angle for a shot so I had to pick him up so you could get a good look at him.

So there you have a little tour of the intertidal here at Goat Island Marine Reserve. I will leave you all with probably my favorite picture so far, of two cushion stars sitting underwater as the water from one pool cascades over them on its journey to find the retreating ocean. (If you can't see them, one is in the middle, and the other is less obvious to it's right)

A taste of Auckland

Last week, as well as the weekend before, I made a venture into Auckland. Surprisingly the driving itself was not as bad as I thought, but the parking was outrageous. It is first come, first served there, and if you don't get into a decent costing parking garage, your end up as I did... paying 24 dollars for an hour and ten minutes! Due to high housing costs, most people try to live outside the city, but this means high traffic volumes and many people competing for fewer parking spots. I did a very quick tour of Queen street where many of their little shops are, I popped into their shopping malls to look for supplies that I could not find in Warkworth, tried to view a house but got lost for almost an hour, eventually determining that I passed the street twice, and visited campus to get a few things taken care of. Unfortunately, sightseeing was a minimum and not due to the parking, but rather due to the weather. Both times I ventured into Auckland it rained. On my second trip, when I went to the University campus, it did clear long enough to take a few pictures. Much like UNBSJ, it has a mix of middle aged and newer buildings, but unlike it, there are some much older buildings. The main campus area is actually surrounded by the wall of an military barracks built when Auckland was much younger.

In the center of the photo is the main administrative building known by a few names including the unoriginal "clock tower" and the more affectionate (if I recall correctly) "wedding cake" building. The inside was beautiful when I first toured it with Dr. Andrew Jeffs. The outside is equally intricate and I will aim to get a picture when they are done with their construction.

In the case of both trips in, there was definitely anxiety brought on by the big city driving, traffic, rain, parking costs, having to use the washroom, and not knowing for certain where I was. In both cases I ended up driving back in the dark, and was always relieved when the sign for Warkworth popped up, as I know my way back to the lab from that point. On the second trip, the weather cleared on the way home, and this left for some beautiful skies. To unwind, I decided to take a few shots of the sky. The views are definitely spectacular, however despite not having the ambient light of the city around, the moon was extremely bright, and was for the majority of the week. It seemed almost like dusk, even in the wee hours of the morn.

The weather here is not lending for such beautiful skies, as it is currently raining with blustering winds. Tomorrow is to be much the same so I shall endeavour to get the last of my back-logged blogs done, with a tour of the Goat Island Reserve Intertidal. Anyway, I will leave you with a shot of the starry night as I myself pack up to go to my bunk and catch a few winks.

An afternoon tramp up the mountain

Well, last week I took the time to wonder up a trail that runs behind laboratory. I figured it was just a quick jog up the hillside next to the farm, so I figured it would be good for a quick stretch of the legs. It starts in a little bush, moving into open area near the pastures.

 I was pleasantly surprised of the spectacular views from the hillside, and was thankful I decided to bring the camera. The hillside is covered with open pastures (including a cow that I somehow managed to startle), the walkway, and the rest consists of large yuccas and grasses. The yucca have clearly flowered and the temporary flower stem is dying off, but there are still numerous little birds darting in and around these large bunching plants, as there is little in the way of bushes on the hillside.

Towards the top of the hill, the trail continued, and so I followed on, but decided to snap a photo of the lab, and much of the marine reserve landscape (from above water, as the reserve is basically only covered below the sea.

 Over the top of the hillside the trial ran along parallel with the shore. After taking a nice picture of Goat Island, I ventured on enjoying the fenced trail and the flowering bushes filled with small birds, chirping and chasing each other. These were the only flowering plants at the moment, except for a few low ground plants which were overwhelming smothered by grass. The beautiful yellow flowers were great against the dark green of the brush behind. They almost appeared to be a weed plant except for their size, overgrowing grasses and even into trees and brush. And much like a good weed, a beautiful flower, accompanied by thorny leaves.

It started to cloud over behind me, and for fear of it raining a put the camera away for a while as I walked along the hilltop, but shot a picture of the clouds as the sky went from a light, baby blue to a darker grey and swirls of white.

But the weather cleared eventually, as the trail started to near a forested area, a few trees clung to the cliffside, again filled with these same small birds.

 Then to my surprise the trail dipped down into the forested gully between the hillsides. Not a big fan of dark places like this, and it was a long way off, but what the heck. Along the way, they had name tags for some of the trees. One more notable tree was the cabbage tree below.

So, in I went under palms and great trees, over brooks and under tree sized silver ferns. It turned out to be a beautiful trail. Long and not so dark, with decent light permeating through the canopy above. There was so much to see, it was hard to choose what pictures to put up, but I did decide to put up this cool orange fungus  that scalloped at the edge.

(Silver Fern)

When I finally emerged on the other side, I was greeted by more pastures. The trail did not take long at this point to end clearly at a fence and lack of trail. At the end though, there was a spectacular view of the cliff side, that otherwise would only be visible by boat. The high winds were beating the shore with surf, creating a white foam around the base of the cliffs.

The weather seemed to be turning again as you can see from the dark clouds above, so I packed the camera up and headed back through the forest and down the hillside to the station while running between the rain drops. The rain actually was just some spitting, nothing terrible, but as I got over the hill I was glad that I was almost home, as I could see the rain coming over Pakiri Beach. I toddled back down the trail and back to work. A wonderful little gem of a trail sitting under my nose this entire time. Sometimes it pays off to take that "other" road.

Catching up!

Well, it has been too long updating this so I will have to do it in parts of the weekend. I have been busy getting settled in, looking for permanent places to live, working on my proposal and finishing up a paper. There have been good days and bad weather wise, and on the nice days I have been blessed with a few beautiful sunsets. These are for you Dad, I will keep them coming. Pictures are hard to take here there is a lot of sunlight, but when it dips down over the horizon and radiates through the clouds I get some wonderful shows of colour.

At night, there are a few critters that have been popping out, such as some large snails, little skinks, and Derek's favorite, the Praying Mantis.

A little while ago, I took a trip to Pakiri Beach, not quite ocean park, but beautiful in it's own way. The trip there took me up the mountain side, through the rolling hills of pasture, down through a jungle road (One way dirt road I might add!), and finally to a middle of no where spot with a beautiful white beach.

The beach was on the other side of a bird sanctuary, so naturally there were number of birds, few of which came close enough to the camera, with the exception of this little guy (to be identified at a later date).

Unlike Ocean Park, there are almost no habitations here, just a campground and a handful of cottages you could count on one hand. The beach was beautifully set against the background of the cliffs, topped by the rolling pastures. Far in the distance is the Leigh reserve, but despite it's proximity, it is quite a drive.

I will try and post a few more tomorrow, though the weather is nice so I want to go do something new, just not sure what, probably go for a drive to the west coast. Stay tuned for more!