Geoducks and other tidal luck

Now that I have all this free time on my hands, I can actually go play in the low tide and harass small already-stressed creatures. I realize I use 'harass' frequently to describe my wildlife observing activities, but I'd like to believe my behavior is slightly better than your average 4 year old. There's plenty of squealing with glee and the occasional poking of things... Anyway. 

There have been decent low tides (not at 11pm) so we went to explore what we could at Teddy Bear Cove.  First we found this. There were snails (Nucella lamellosa?) all over each other in what could be best described as a molluscan orgy, and these egg sacs, loads of them. The mollusks are breeding, it must be spring. 

Then as we daintily traversed the barnacle encrusted rocks, we began to notice a peculiar sight. Sporadically little jets of water would spurt out of the ground, some reaching as high as two feet, maybe more. And for the first time in my life I laid eyes on real live geoducks, or at least the siphons of them. While closed they look lamentably like pathetic little penises emerging from the sand pissing on each other, but when the siphons open, they look like deadly insect trapping flowers, which I clearly find riveting (and so should you!).

 The chapstick is for scale, the suckers are not small. Obviously I crouched awkwardly over these buggers until Brandon gently informed me he really needed to work on his paper.
So I came back the next afternoon, by myself.

Took a few videos, they're just weird and neat to watch. Something I hadn't noticed the first day was that many of them were coming up through what seemed to be solid rock, which I haven't quick figured out yet.

There had been a group out digging for clams while we were exploring the first day and I think they dug up a bunch of these guys. These polychaetes are actually rather pretty, you can see just about everything that goes on in them through their skin. They're burrowers, thus my speculation that they must have been excavated(plus they didn't look to be in the best state). The jerks (diggers) didn't even fill in their holes so anyone's kid could have tripped into them...

There weren't as many anemones as I had hoped, but this stripey one made the 'quality not quantity' case pretty well.

 There were of course crabs, of the hermit and non-hermit variety.

 A little group of Barrow's goldeneye ducks were floating around, looking aloof.

 And last but not least... I found some mushrooms.The yellow was incredibly bright against the red brown duff and I almost missed the red ones, but some sun was gleaming off their caps.
The color looked a lot like cherry pie filling from a can; the kind of thick shiny gelatinous pink-red. No idea what either are.

 Now for a luxurious nap. And some reading. What a wild life I lead.

Have a superb week!