Blogging by the bay, pt. 1

My walking partner (read: mother) and I decided to go to the beach one not-so-sunny day and take a look around. There is a rather vast beach along the Fundy coast . . . that same beach that yields the world-famous high (and low!) tides. Today was a very sunny and bright day, so I decided to walk out by myself to see what I could find as the tide went out. This is going to be part one of a continued series of posts about Alma's and Fundy's beaches and what you can find on them. In this one I'll cover . . .

Shells!

Alas I could not find a scallop shell on my beachwalks. Those are very common shells to find on the beaches of Alma, but not nearly as common as the mussel shell, shown here.

The mussel shell has a very pretty opalescent underside, shown in the second picture above. Sadly, this photograph doesn't do the shell proper justice! To give you a bit of an idea what it might look like in person, I played with the saturation and contrast of the photograph. I recommend doing your own beachcombing, however, because nothing compares to seeing the shells on their own!

Just look at all those colours that come through from something that looks like it's just white! I found another part of a shell earlier that had all these greens and pinks in it . . . it was beautiful. I didn't take a picture because I knew it certainly couldn't do justice; the details were much too fine. I wish I could have, though!

Here we have a crab's shell. I wasn't able to find a full exoskeleton, but here is a very good specimen of the crab's body.

Now, I'm not exactly sure what kind of shell this is, but it is fairly commonly found. I would assume it would normally belong to some sort of sea snail. More often than not, these shells are adopted by hermit crabs looking for a home.

Barnacles are odd little critters that will cling to just about anything that doesn't move around a whole lot. They're hard little white shells with little creatures in the middle that look kind of like a pair of lips. When water comes up to cover them, they can be found sticking their little feet out to look around for nutrients. Here is a picture of some barnacles on a mussel shell. They can also be found on boats, rocks, seaweed and other shells.

Finally, these little things are what I like to call "boat shells" because a little rowboat is exactly what they look like! To be perfectly honest, I've never seen one with the actual animal in it, so I don't know exactly what they look like. I can only assume they live in the little slipper portion.

I put two of them side by side to show you what they look like on top and on bottom.

I am missing a few of the shells frequently found on the Alma beach, but there they are for the most part. Over the next little while I'll continue to show you treasures and other pictures and information about the beaches of Fundy.

A brief post regarding the Canada Day weekend: the weather was miserable! Because of that (and the fact I was working the morning shift while any events were taking place), I don't have much news for you. However, all summer, interesting interpretive events are taking place in the park just about every night, as well as children's activities and of course hiking and bike trails, canoing and kayaking, swimming and sightseeing. Not to mention Fundy's golf course is top notch! Weather is meant to be beautiful according to the Weather Network until sometime next week, so if you're thinking about experiencing some Fundy magic, this week would be a great week to do it!

K.