anemones, barnacles, and molluscs. oh my!

every tuesday afternoon i spend three hours in an ecology and conservation lab course. sounds fun, doesn't it? of course, i could understand why you'd be jealous. usually this lab consists of filling out tedious, tiresome lab reports about biomimcry and trophic levels. but this tuesday was neither tedious nor tiresome. it was actually a lot of fun. because instead of analyzing graphs of population trends or watching movies on global warming, we took a field trip! we spent the afternoon at the tide pools, hopping and slipping from rock to rock, hunting for all sorts of sea critters. we found all kinds of creatures--hermit crabs, starfish, regular fish, and even some strange sea mushrooms. of course, my camera died before we came upon the cool stuff. but i did managae to snap a few snippits of our safari.

you know you go to point loma when your
school is only a quick stroll from the beach

tide pools! ta-da!
lab partners, best friends, partners in crime...
a cave! neat-o!

it was a fun-filled field trip, full of...

anemones!barnacles!and molluscs!...oh my!

speaking of sea anemones, for some strange reason, our professor, dr. mooring encouraged us all to lick them. he did it himself, along with the majority of my class. as enticing as they all made it sound ("ouch!" "it burns!" etc.), i opted to keep my tongue to myself. here are two such participants, shea and portlan...making out...with one such anemone.

...other than that, the afternoon was quite normal. and also quite fun. nothing beats ditching class to scamper about with sea creatures. next week we're field tripping again. ...to go where? to do what? find out next tuesday!