This morning on the 26th we went out to Chola Bay, this area was really special, the slope of the land is very gradual so when low tide occurs the water goes very far out, exposing a lot of surface. The terrain was mostly sand with some larger rocks dispersed throughout.
Here we found a lot of marine animals, the land was littered with hermit crabs and shells to a degree that you couldn't help but step on them in order to get around.
We found a lot of snails, clams, murex, gorgonians, fiddler crabs and blue crabs. Our professor Whitney H. found two blue crabs mating under a rock she flipped over, this time they were actually mating as one was female and the other male, unlike our interesting crab find on the first day of tide pooling, we could tell this because of the pattern of their ventral side.
Some our most exciting finds were made here, among them, an eel, pigmy octopus, and I was lucky enough to find a sting ray, which the group was able to catch. One of the pigmy octopus was actually had hatching offspring when Whitney found it, as soon as we put it in a container, all the little baby octopus started swimming away, this could have been a stress response to us finding it.
- Gabriel Carcereri
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