Mollusk

Topside; Beneath

Went Swimming and Took Some Snaps

Tomales Bay Grab-Bag

Abalone, Again

Kelp

Rocking the Chart: Two Views

Low, low tide here.
I don't usually see this rock as anything more than a ripple or a boil in the waves heading for shore.

Literary Preoccupation

"Reading, his therapist had suggested, had likely been his first drug."

--William Gibson, Zero History

Mendocino Garden

 Shots from a rock garden just a bit north out from Van Damme State Beach, just past the first sea-cave.

This Year's Model

Wetsuit -- O'Neill Heat 6/5/4 --new;

diver -- MD 54 -- older.

Checking Out the Locals

Quest

Abalone float and diver.

Kiss My Abalone

Old diving motto.

Here is a bed of abalone, not yet grown to "legal size" for human harvesting.

I like abalone as creatures more than as food these days.  In my youth, I collected and fried my share of these mollusks, but now I like watching them underwater, watching them move about slowly, ponderously, as they seek their own food.  Abalone move less like garden snails and more like rhinos in my estimation -- formidable hulks, even if still juvenile in nature, as these ones are.

Green; Blue