6thof9: Tide pooling 2014

Tide pooling was a can't miss activity with Richard. I wish that we could have done more of it. Sure it is fun for the rest of us, but when you tide pool with Richard you are sure to see something awesome.

Can't be getting sunburns. We heckled Richard and Ben plenty while taking this picture. It was so good to see Ben and spend some quality time with him. I adore his brother and sister and so it was no surprise that I liked spending time with him too.

This was the strangest, fastest moving starfish I have ever seen. Looks like it came out of the movie Aliens. Tyler says that when they were snorkeling later he moved a rock and found two of these about a foot across!

Tyler found this guy and showed us. "I found a cone snail!" Richard looks in the net and says, "Good identification Tyler!" Cone snails are poisonous and so you can't touch them. This guy was trying to sting the net and it made me nervous. About 10 minutes later I found something I thought looked interesting. "Hey what is this? Oh, it's a rock." Tyler: "Good identification!"

A sea cucumber that has spit its gross white stuff out and an urchin

Kids love to pull Richard over and show him things that they have found and they love to see what he has. He is always patient and tells them facts, lets them touch it if it is appropriate, he is a good teacher.

Hermit crab

This is a box crab. They look just like rocks! Richard caught this one. It was my goal to catch one as well.

Look at how weird he looks all opened up ready to fight

After seeing the box crab Tyler and I went to looking with much more purpose. We found this little black rock crab and spent like 5 minutes catching him.

We were so proud we turned to Richard to show him

"Nice job!" He says without a hint of irony as he has 3 box crabs in one hand and is going for a fourth. It was like a scene from a movie. The crabs were perfectly content just sitting in his hand. When Tyler tried to hold one it got away. Just add crab whisperer to Richard's many talents.