Point Lobos tidepools

I drove down from San Francisco to catch a good low tide at Point Lobos. Got to the Weston Beach area a little before the tide turned. Fog was thick and the tidepool rocks were wet and uneven, which is more or less perfect.

The pools at Weston are rich. I saw Ochre Sea Stars in their usual variety of oranges and purples, Giant Green Anemones fully open, Aggregating Anemones in tight mats, a Bat Star or two, and a Striped Shore Crab that let me get close with the macro lens. One pool had a Sculpin — brown and completely cryptic until it moved.

I spent a long time on a single Gumboot Chiton that was parked under an overhang. Chitons are not photogenic in the usual sense — they don’t do anything — but the plating on a Gumboot is worth a careful look.

Didn’t get out to the deeper pools because the tide came back faster than I expected (this is how people get stranded and it’s always this one mistake), but I got most of the shots I wanted. Cold hands, wet sleeves, a thermos of coffee still hot in the car. The classics.

Sea otters offshore the whole time — I could hear them before I could see them in the fog.