One Of Those Snails Is Not A Snail

Mendocino Garden

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

Not A Pretty Sport II

Weeds and surface scum from taking photos neck deep (or deeper) into the tide-flow.  The sweater worked like a filter, and I was square in the current, so I caught quite a bit.  At one point I was distinctly festooned--not a word I use lightly--with sea grass and kelp.

My James Bond persona: 008.  

(I made and carried a business card in the fourth grade that identified me as British Secret Service Agent 008; I little thought how a business card did not quite fit the secret agent persona, and yet how "secret" was Bond, James Bond, about his identity?  My foolishness was cultural and of the day, I'd say.)

 

Tomales Bay Intertidal: Glimpses

The Intertidal Zone

Between the high and the low;
Between the here and the there.

Clay mask (small):
sculpture mix; shiny black and shino glazing.

Bits and Pieces

Another Beauty

Face In The Water

Face: 
sculpture mix; transparent black and shino glazes.

Blue Duck

Self-portrait #52.

Star Quality

Free Diving: Coral Cove

On a low viz day, unfortunately.  Still counts!

Clear Water Beauty

Flow Factor: Surface and Depth

Note the warbles at the edge of the still--pausing--surface waters here.  Note also the surge showing in the disturbed water in the foreground and in the background/distance.

I love kelp, the simplest, most humble blades, stems, and floats.  The particles in the water demonstrate helpfully how visibility underwater was severely limited as well as the flow patterns as the surge moved in and out.  Such surging will be more apparent, I believe, in subsequent photos.

 Note the flowing away of the surge, with the bending of the sea grass and the movement of the sand and organisms floating free.  "Free" meaning caught in the grip of the surge and the current, but free floating.  Sure.

 The surge recoils, pausing.

Wham!  The surge kicks in as the wave moves through this space, gripping me in this case and sending me flying through the water.  I think the blurry photo, otherwise unremarkable, does a fine job of catching the actual movement I was made to make.

 Flow relaxing, again, momentarily.  More kelp.

Self-portrait of a diver in the surge.  (Don't divers look goofy?  Such unsexy, unglamorous equipment.)  You can see one eye, at least, is bloodshot from the salt and particles in the water that kept leaking into my mask, and you can see the particles flowing in the foreground even as the kelp blades flex in the background.  I'm probably holding onto a rock or a kelp holdfast here.

Now, of course, I prefer better visibility.  The cathedralesque quality of the kelp forests is so hard to appreciate when you can't quite see as far as your arm or your flippers or even a double-body length.  And yet.  And yet being in the water, in the surge, in the mix: that's what matters.  And that's what keeps me coming back even when I suspect that I won't be able to see the beauty at a distance.  I know that the small beauties, the close beauties, deserve attention too.