The amazing wildlife!

Another weekend, another adventure.

Saturday we spent much of the day sprucing up our institutional-looking house.  Steve spent five hours painting the living room and I laid carpet on the stairs so that the metal toe plates don't tear up our feet when you go up and down.

With those two projects accomplished, we set out for fun on Sunday.  We decided to explore another local beach and somehow stumbled across a beautiful, unique beach called Toguchi.  It is a shallow beach area with a coral bottom and as the tide was out there was a stretch about 1/4 mile out to sea that was all tidal pools.  There were also these awesome rock islands that were all weathered by the water.  You'll see what I mean by the photos. 

It was amazing and the kids had a ball!  We picked our way out to the deep water stopping frequently to marvel at the wildlife under under feet.  It seemed like you saw a lot of stuff when you were just walking, but then if you crouched down and were still, you could see so much more.  And then when we got in a pool deep enough, we donned our snorkel masks and a whole new world was opened up.  I think Cannon and London are hooked on snorkeling now! 

Some of the things we saw included: green shrimp, a bright red hermit crab, a small octopus, these brilliant blue small fish, lots of sea anemone, a blue sea star bigger than my hand, crabs that looked like they had fur on them, lots of feather stars (identified by Cannon), lots of different kinds of coral, tons of sea cucumbers (they look like giant poops) and a spotted stingray (this last one was an undocumented find by Cannon).

Emmy found a small striped fish that unfortunately didn't make the cut, but she carried it around all afternoon in a baggie in which she put water, shells and some seaweed.  She was most distressed when, at the end of the afternoon, it fell out of the bag and a small crab had it for dinner!  Boy was she mad at the crab!  Unfortunately I don't have too many pictures of the wildlife since I didn't carry my camera out across the tidal pools.

Emmy with her fish friend