Starfish. Starfish Everywhere!
Twice a month, the positions of the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth all lie in a straight line. It is during this time that we see the Moon as either “new” or “full”, depending on whether the Moon lies between us and the Sun, or we between the Sun and Moon. Never content with a simple geometrical description, astronomers call this alignment of celestial bodies a syzygy, a word that surprisingly will net you just 21 points in Scrabble given that it requires a worthless blank tile in order to play. While a syzygy’s effect on your board game exploits may be negligible (unless you manage to plunk that “Z” down on a double letter score and the final “Y” on a coveted triple word score…in which case, whoa! You’re up to 93 points and the game is most assuredly yours to lose!), the effect of such an alignment on our planet is actually quite pronounced. The gravitational fields of the Sun and the Moon exert an attractive force on us; the difference in the magnitude of this attraction on opposite sides of the Earth is, in part, what gives rise to the phenomenon we know as tides (for an explanation longer than two sentences, I refer you to NOAA). During a syzygy, the force from the Sun and the force from the Moon are aligned, with the result being that the range in tides we observe is larger. In other words, high tides are higher. Low tides are lower. And when low tides are lower:
You can’t quite see them all in this photo, but by my count there were about five dozen starfish visible in the field of view when I took this photo. The first syzygy of March 2013 provided me with some abnormally low, mid-day low tides and consequently the opportunity to photograph the plethora of starfish that call Larrabee State Park just outside Bellingham home. During typical low tides, such as the ones we get when the Sun and Moon are at right angles to each other and their gravitational pulls partially cancel each other out, most of these starfish are comfortable below sea level. Even then, a little searching will undoubtedly reveal a handful of starfish clustered beneath rocks or under piles of slimy, green, washed-up seaweed. But when the tide drops below the typical low tide level, the most common starfish in the area, Pisaster ochraceus, the purple or ochre sea star, is literally EVERYWHERE. The quantities can actually start to make you feel somewhat threatened until you remember that starfish move at like 0.0003 miles per hour and have something called “tube feet”. As you can see, the starfish tend to cluster in cracks and crevices within the rock. This is annoying because the cracks and crevices are about the only place you can put your feet without running the risk of losing your footing and smashing your skull open on the sandstone and exposing your brains for the seagulls to pick at, given that most of the rock is covered in slick seaweed that makes banana peels look like coarse sandpaper when it comes to the degree of traction provided.
Pisaster ochraceus comes in three different flavors…err, I mean colors. The purple stars dominate, but orange and pink individuals are not uncommon. I was able to locate one extremely diverse constellation of starfish (I have absolutely no idea what the collective noun for starfish is, but it would be pretty cool if it was “constellation”…) hanging out under a rock:
The wide range of color variation exhibited by Pisaster ochraceus.
I never cease to be fascinated by the robust rigidity of starfish. The purple ones in particular look like they should be nothing more than wet, sticky, gelatinous blobs of silly putty, but alas you can’t even copy newsprint with them, much less mold them into an sphere, which is the ACTUAL shape of a star—that is unless the star is rotating rapidly, in which case its shape may be more closely approximated by an oblate spheroid.
I have no idea what this starfish is trying to accomplish here…
Some of the stars exhibit signs of multiple personality disorder, giving us some bizarre orange and purple combination stars like this one here:
As brightly colored as they are, the sheer abundance of Pisaster ochraceus along the NW Washington coast makes them the black bear of the starfish world. Impressive surely, but not really what we came to see. A closer inspection reveals some less commonly spotted species. For example, meet the “grizzly bear” of sea stars:
The find of the day: a 20-armed sunflower star, otherwise known as Pycnopodia helianthoides.
I think we can all agree that Pycnopodia would be one of the most utterly terrifying species on the planet if it was capable of moving at any rate of speed that could be considered “fast”. Sure, it doesn’t eat humans but neither do spiders and this thing pretty much looks like a gigantic, orange, 20-armed spider with spikes. Given that I know plenty of folks who start to dial 911 at the sight of a spider the size of a pin-head, there is no doubt in my mind that there would exist an entire industry devoted exclusively to Pycnopodia extermination if it had managed to move more than the 3 inches that it did in the 20 minutes I sat there watching it. Clearly Alfred Hitchcock never encountered a sunflower star or I think his film-making career would have featured less birds and more marine life.
Two spotted arms of a leather star, Dermasterias imbricata, poke out from under a rock.
For a list of upcoming sygyzgies, check out this handy moon map, and to see when starfish viewing will be ideal along your favorite beach, you can find no better resource than the official NOAA Tides & Currents website.
The Golden Gate (Bridge)
San Francisco.
I’ve always thought that it would be one of the few large cities where I could actually stand to live. Never mind the fact that my current and projected foreseeable future income levels will not permit me to live in any of the parts of the city to which the above statement applies. Or the fact that the next major rupture of the San Andreas or Hayward faults is going to make things look…shall we say…”less attractive”. Ignore those minor details for now. All I mean to say is that it seems like a nice place to live, which is a thought that perplexes me, given that in general, the idea of living in the same metropolitan area as several million other human beings makes me want to look up job listings for “hermit” and run away into the hills screaming. San Francisco though seems to have a charm and a combination of positive attributes though that most other cities do not.
For starters it is located in one of the most scenic environs of any city in the country. Rolling grassy hills, redwood groves, long stretches of sandy and rocky beaches, rugged coastline, appealing architecture, fortified islands, all within an hours drive of the city center. Hard to match that. Seattle comes close (the view of Mt. Rainier on a clear day? ahhhhhhh) but it gets marked down because it gets, on average, 14 more inches of rain each year. Salt Lake City has gorgeous mountains but it is covered in snow for part of the year and tends to get smothered by thick layers of pollution that get rammed up against the western flanks of the Wasatch. And all cities east of the Rockies are automatically disqualified because they’re east of the Rockies. To some Phoenix might seem sort of scenic, what with the 50 foot high cacti and mountains and all, until you realize that in reality it is a sizzling hell hole with literally no sustainable water source and is totally unfit for large quantities of human habitation. At least San Francisco has Yosemite just a few hundred miles away that it can poach water from. Also, it sort of seems like everything in San Francisco is painted either white or a nice bright pastel color. Painting everything white does wonders for a city; it makes it feel larger, cleaner, less claustrophobic, and lends a nice airy, ethereal quality to everything.
San Francisco also has what in my opinion is one of the few man-made creations that actually contributes to the beauty of a place rather than besmirching it: the Golden Gate Bridge. In case you’re not familiar with the bridge, it is one of the few things in San Francisco not painted white or pastel, but rather a bright burnt orange (actually “international orange” for those of you who want to go out to your local Home Depot and pick up a gallon). The “Golden Gate” for which the bridge is named (and not vice-versa) is a narrow strait that connects the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco Bay. In a somewhat eery coincidence, U.S. Army Captain and explorer extraordinaire John C. Fremont bestowed the now famous name upon the strait in 1846, two years BEFORE the strait was used as the point of arrival for millions of millionaire wannabees seeking riches in the newly discovered gold fields east of Sacramento. Fremont had given it the name Golden Gate because he recognized the area’s potential importance in opening up trade with the Orient, completely unaware (obviously) that the discovery of real gold in California is what would cause the population of the city just to the south of the strait, San Francisco, to multiply by 18,000% in just six years, and make the Golden Gate known worldwide. In the 1920s, fed up with the 20 minute ferry ride across the strait, some folks decided it would be a bright idea to build a bridge across it, apparently thinking that sitting in traffic for more than 20 minutes waiting to cross the strait while constantly having to yell at the driver in front of you to stop futzing with their iPhone and drive would somehow be more pleasant than the leisurely ferry crossing.
Yang Ming container ship is greeted by the Golden Gate Bridge
An unique perspective on the 1.7 mile-long suspension bridge can be obtained by going beneath it. If you don’t have a boat, fear not, in another stunning coincidence, the U.S. Army conveniently constructed a masonry fortification, Fort Point, on the point right beneath the south end of the bridge in 1853*:
Under the Bridge: the remains of Fort Point, built in 1853 to secure San Francisco Bay from enemy attack.
*Actually the Army did no such thing. You know, seeming as how the technology to build a massive metal suspension bridge across a deep, windy, 1.3 kilometer wide strait didn’t exactly exist in 1853. The engineers in charge of building the bridge eighty-odd years later did however build the bridge directly above the fort (they wanted to remove the Fort entirely but cooler heads prevailed), and so the Fort, being the rather inanimate object that it is, remains there to this day, providing a nice spot to stand and look out over the bay while holding on to your hat and listening to rush-hour traffic crawl past on the bridge high over your head.
Arguably the best, although not most unique, views of the bridge can be found north of town, just off of Highway 101 in the Marin Headlands where a number of overlooks along Conzelman Road provide spectacular vantage points from which to observe or photograph the bridge. These overlooks aren’t a secret though, the ones closest to Highway 101 are predictably packed with people and it can be impossible to find a parking spot. However, the bridge is also partially obscured here, head further and higher up the road for more expansive views that, while still busy, become less so the further from the highway you get. and. The number of tripods also increases steadily as you get further and further from the interstate which I interpreted as a good sign since one of my goals was to get some photos of the bridge at sunset. As you can see in the picture at the top of the page, these overlooks are often slightly above the fog that socks in the coast from time to time.
Most people seem to stop and turn around at the one-way-road/18% grade sign that appears along Conzelman Road just before it begins to wind its way back down through the headlands to the coast. If you proceed onwards though, you will be rewarded by getting to shift your car into low gear, and also by a plethora of quieter and more secluded, albeit more distant, views of the bridge. The road ultimately deposits one at the trail leading to the Point Bonita Lighthouse, located at the northern entrance to the Golden Gate. The lighthouse was built in 1853, and yet several hundred ships still managed to wreck themselves in this area during the influx associated with the California Gold Rush, a testament to the ability of the area’s trademark thick fog to obscure any sign of the coast until its too late.
Point Bonita Lighthouse, Marin County, California
More pictures of the local flora and fauna hopefully coming soon, including the biggest group o’ Grebes you’ve ever seen in one photograph.
More Than 50 Shades of Gray: a Cloudy Winter in Bellingham
My college English professor once told me that a great way to hook people on a story is to begin with a personal anecdote. Though now that I think about it, he also told me that bacon was bad for me and that my writing was good, so I suppose I should take anything that came out of his mouth with a grain of sodium chloride. But heck, I’m even prefacing the primary anecdote with this secondary anecdote so you should probably just read anyways.
Let me set the scene for you: Bellingham, Washington; nestled along the coast where the Strait of Georgia and the Strait of Juan De Fuca merge together to form a bewildering assortment of coves, islands, bays, and inlets, where half the license plates you see on the highway are from British Columbia, in the only place where the occasionally explosive Cascade Range makes its way allllllll the way down to the beach, and where the nearly 11,000 foot ice sculpted summit of Mt. Baker dominates the view from town on 100% of the 25% of the days out of the year when there is actually a view from town. (Read that again if you need to…) You see, Bellingham is really cloudy. It also happens to be where I currently reside. I’m not trying to knock Bellingham; it’s a great town in a myriad of different ways. Really great. The pictures on this page should prove that. But it’s really, really, REALLY cloudy. Especially in the winter. When I first got here I had a professor tell me that a sunny day is a perfectly legitimate excuse for turning in an assignment late. Many days I wake up, open the blinds, and think that I must be watching an old episode of Gilligan’s Island…you know, the one’s before they started making it in color? In fact, the official motto of Bellingham is “The City of Subdued Excitement”. I am convinced that this is mainly because it’s a little hard to be anything other than subdued when a gray pall can settle over the city for weeks on end. It’s like nature’s Vallium.
Cedar Lake, a short hike from the outskirts of Bellingham, after a rare low-altitude snowfall.
Anyways, the anecdote. Upon the advice of professors, students, and other acquaintances familiar with the winter…er…”conditions”…here, way back in September (one of only three months out of the year where it is statistically more likely to be partly cloudy or sunny than completely overcast) I made a visit to Rite-Aid with the intent of purchasing some Vitamin D tablets. Now let me assure you that the vitamin section at Rite-Aid is the very epitome of robust; my local store stocks about eight different complete lines of nutritional supplement products. Vitamin A, Vitamin B, Vitamin C, Vitamin Q, calcium, magnesium, iron, glucosamine, corn silk, echinacea, fish oil, cod oil, beet juice, cow bile, pig urine extract…it was all there. Except for the Vitamin D, whose slot on the shelf belonging to each and every brand was completely empty. An omen if I’ve ever seen one.
Now that I have (hopefully) made my point, the question becomes: can we quantify just how cloudy Bellingham is? On the surface, one would think that composing a list of the cloudiest cities in the United States would be a relatively straightforward exercise. You would be wrong. It turns out that a variety of methods exist to generate such a list. One can, for example, calculate the total number of overcast hours per year expressed as a percentage of possible daylight hours (if that made any sense at all). Others prefer instead to count simply the number of days in which the Sun remains hidden behind clouds for the entire day, or the number of days in which the sky is overcast for more than 50% of the daytime hours. And none of this even begins to take into account this potentially thorny issue: what constitutes “cloudy”, exactly? Should “partly cloudy” count as “cloudy” or “sunny” in a tally? One imagines that the answer to this depends on weather the meteorologist undertaking this task is more of a “glass half empty” or “glass half full” kind of person. And what about night? Do we care if it is cloudy at night? Or are we only interested to know how much sunshine we are losing? As an astronomy enthusiast, I demand that the percentage of cloudy nighttime hours be taken into account. As you can see, madness is never that far away.
Looking down onto the clouds and fog from Samish Overlook. Oftentimes the best way to get out of the clouds is simply to hike above them! The summits of two of the San Juan Islands, Orcas and Lummi, also poke up out of the clouds.
The lack of any well-established protocols when it comes to defining “cloudiness” leaves ample opportunity for cities who rank highly on one list to try and come up with a new way of calculating the list that moves them down a few spots. Or, ideally, out of the top 10 entirely. After all, you don’t see too many glossy tourist brochures exclaiming “Come visit the 3rd cloudiest city in Washington and enjoy a vacation without the hassle of having to reapply sunscreen every 3 hours!” Catchy as it sounds, it just doesn’t sell. (However, if you happen to be a tourism exec from Aberdeen, WA and you are interested in licensing this slogan for use in your promotional materials, please contact me using the oh-so-appropriately named “Contact” link above!) Regardless of which metric you use though, Bellingham, Washington generally ranks near the top of such lists. If it doesn’t, chances are the makers of the list are interpreting the word “city” rather loosely and including every little hamlet and village on the Olympic Peninsula in their calculations, yet another devious method of getting yourself off the list.
Austin Creek Falls, on a cloudy yet photographically conducive day.
The majestic Mt. Baker and Twin Sisters in the Cascade Range, just east of Bellingham. A shame that they’re not visible more often.
To give you some perspective on my rant, I feel obligated to disclose that I grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona, a city that receives, on average, more than 300 days of sunshine per year. Such a concept is about as foreign to Western Washingtonians as a hurricane warning is to Saskatchewanians. The rain here is different too. During a lecture on precipitation last quarter, one of my professors asked the class, composed almost entirely of western Washingtonians, if anyone had ever experienced a “thunderstorm“. Less than half of the class raised their hands. More often than not, we experience what someone in New Zealand would call “pissing”, a steady, extremely light rain that that lasts for days and yet somehow manages to thoroughly permeate everything with dampness despite never requiring you to change your windshield wiper setting from “intermittent” to “warp speed”. However, when the rain finally ceases and the clouds part, the emotions experienced is roughly on par with the feeling that Arizonans get when it rains for the first time in months. Everyone just sort of stops whatever it is that they are doing (including driving apparently…as much as it rains here, you’d think people would be better at driving in it) and goes wandering around outside looking up at the sky, squinting, and trying to figure out what the hell is happening.
And then there’s me. While everyone else stumbles around in disbelief, I grab my camera, put on my hiking boots, and head to the nearest beach, mountain, waterfall, overlook, or trail to enjoy and photograph a majestic landscape that truly deserves to be uncloaked and put on display far more often than it is. But naturally, I do all of this in an extremely subdued manner.
Sunset at low tide in Chuckanut Bay.
When it’s sunny, the Chuckanut Mountains just south of Bellingham provide excellent views of a snow-capped Mt. Baker.
Zach Schierl Photography 