Cama Beach State Park - May 26, 2009

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We gathered at Cama Beach State Park for the South monitoring line area; it lies directly at the bottom of the road down to the resort cabins. This was a better day than last year when we were wet and frozen, but still very windy and we came prepared on this day at 10:30 AM, without any sunshine to cheer us. The low tide of -3.6 was expected to be at 12:48 PM and since this was our first beach of the year we knew we had to work diligently to get our work done in time. Duane H. and John C. established our start point from last year’s data and the line was stretched out toward the water’s edge. Because there were not as many of us as hoped for we had to make the decision to omit the North Line at the other end of the resort.
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Our findings were lucrative: many thick mussel areas as we progressed down, colorful welks near the lower sections, and at the very end of our line a huge moon snail, Euspira lewisii, for which this beach is so well known. The moon snail had its foot area extended and was sitting by an almost complete casing (rarely seen in one piece). For many of us this was an incredible first look at such a large, live one. Nudibranchs, Onchidoris, were in abundance and the area at the low intertidal was extensively covered with their egg masses. We also found a lined chiton, Tonicella lineata, which was very large, decorated with its signature diamond pattern on its back; there were many of them in the area.
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And while we examined our quadrats and worked the line, we had an observer watching us from about 100 ft away: a very healthy bald eagle, which watched us for awhile, took off, and then came back and landed again to ponder what we were all about. We thought he might be hoping we would provide him with supper. Thanks to the first crew for 2009 for all their help and to John and Duane for getting our first monitoring of the season off to a good start. Several folks staying at Cama came by to see what we were doing and learned a little about Beach Watchers and intertidal monitoring. Written by Judi McD. Pictures taken by J. Custer and J. McDougall.
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