Botanical Beach

Botanical beach is about two hours north of Victoria on a twisting, winding road, with no gas stations for at least 180 km.  The low tide I was chasing (a 1.2 foot) turned at 8:45 am, so it was a 6 am start. 

In The Tide Pools:
Tide pools are like little windows into another world.  The rock at Botanical Beach has a variety of pools carved into - from 1 litre to the size of swimming pools.  Each little pool is a microcausem of life - sea anemones filtering out bits of food, snails scraping algae of the walls and sea weeds fighting for light.  Sea anemones are one of my favorite because there is nothing like them that grow on land.

On the Rocks:
In the low tide area there are exposed rocks with a variety of life growing on it.  Black Katy Chitons were common, peaking out from under pieces of kelp and occupying the holes that would normally be filled by a sea urchin.  Rocks near the water were pitted with circular indintions, many hiding purple sea urchins, as if they had made those homes themselves.  We only found one sea star - a Ochre Star hanging on for dear life on the under side of ledge.

 
Sea Weeds:
Depending on how high up the beach you go, you find a variety of sea weed species.  Many sea weeds are specialized at find ways to trip visitors, or encourage a nasty fall.  Compared to land species, these are relativly simple plants (they don't have flowers, or specialized roots), but they have a beauty all their own.

High Tide Region
The high tide region is dominated by hard shelled things - mussels, limpets and barnicles. 

 
On my April visit, there were several large balls of bull kelp washed up on shore.  Bull Kelp is a seasonal plant - it grows most durring the summer so the kelp that washes up now is in pretty bad shape.