Mary DeLong's photo of a Hopkins rose taken at FFMR.
FFMR volunteer naturalist Mary DeLong reports:
On December 2 I led a walk with fellow volunteer naturalist Bill Gomez. We were with Nan Ho and her her students of La Positas Community College. It being a minus tide there was a fabulous variety of creatures to see.
Some highlights were a Sunflower star in the big surge channel by Cypress Point; it was missing some of it’s rays but still manuevered about the pool easily. We saw two small octopuses, and the first one did a good show of color and texture changes as well as shooting ink at us!
Bill found a Hopkins rose nudibranch (which I haven’t seen in about 10 years) as we were just reaching the grassy flat area. In the same area we found a small very green eel which gets it’s color because of it’s sea grass diet.
Two anemones, the one on the left lacking green symbiotic algae.
Another highlight was two anemones side by side, one of which had no symbiotic algae and so appeared ghostly white.
It was an afternoon we all will remember on the reef.