Photo Album:
"halfmoonbay-02-07"
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Photo Album: "halfmoonbay-02-07" |
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Lisa leads a whopping 52 people from Parking Lot C to the reef, about 1.5 miles away. Another 24 people parked at Pillar Point lot and are already waiting for us. |
They're rebuilding a boat in the parking lot. How cool is THAT? (I sure hope he isn't getting parking tickets for being there so long) |
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We left the lot at 11:08am (ok, ok, so I'm a nerd who likes to take pictures of his watch). |
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The beach looks walk-able. So let's walk.... Beats the sidewalk. |
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The seagulls are surprised to find a buffet waiting for them when the woke. |
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Walkin the beach. About half of the group made a bee-line to the reef. The other half of us slowpokes combed the beach. |
At about +3" tide, you can walk the entire beach. Just barely. But you can walk it. |
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The topsoil runoff is interesting. Looks like an oil slick, but it's only topsoil. |
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Our first star. Cool! |
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Heh, this guy is clamming. No, wait, he's digging for "ghost shrimp" to use as bait. What in the heck is "ghost shrimp"? I'd never heard of it! |
A Bucket of Ghost Shrimp! |
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Ghost shrimp are FAST burrowers. These 2 were gone under the sand in about 2 minutes. |
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The tide has exposed about 28 pace's worth of beach. |
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Finally, the REEF. Everybody, and I do mean EVERYBODY (well, just about) rounds the cliff, not knowing what to expect, and WHAM the sight of a mile's worth of exposed rock stuns them. |
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Heh, gorillas in the mist! (Nope, only Ed in his combat outfit, ready to hit the surf!) |
Um, where did the water go? |
No matter, mud is paddleable too! |
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Heading for the BIG ONES. |
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A gumshoe (?) chiton. |
Check out the holes in the rocks (hard to see at this resolution). |
Wow, check out those exposed reef rocks! |
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That's a BIG mussel shell |
CAREFUL! They bite!!!! |
An anemonae. Check out the broken shells and small stones stuck to the anemonea's sticky surface. |
Walkin the reef. |
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A bucket of (legally harvested) mussels. This one will feed a family. Surprisingly few people were harvesting. |
The Other Dean in a neato fish hat. |
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12:08. 4 minutes past low tide at 12:05pm. |
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Some people are checking out the mussel beds. |
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It's amazing how flat it is out here. |
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Mussels everywhere. |
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Another anenomae. The top one is out of the water, and is surprisingly exposed. |
Mussel beds everywhere. |
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Picking thru the mussels. |
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A nestled anenomae. |
Sea Star hiding in the rocks. |
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Somebody had 2 buckets of urchin. Yuk, urchins taste like vinegar to me. |
Hard to believe this is usually under 10+ feet of crashing water. |
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Pretty. |
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Mussels |
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Wow, the water is really coming in. |
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Lisa contemplates whether to jump or not. |
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VALUABLE INFO for future trips. This section was pretty dry at low tide, but was slightly underwater at 12:30 and was gushing by about 12:40. That is, this spot is just about mean 0 feet. |
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Lisa leads the last of the emmigrants. |
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A napping harbor seal stands watch over a bed of mussels on the umpteenth annual Negative Tide Day at Half Moon Bay! 76 people braved morning storms to walk the reef in absolutely gorgeous blue skies. |
Wow, those waves are BIG! Time to get outta here! |
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A lone kayak. |
Ed Anderson, president of BASK, shows off his safety gear before hitting the surf.mmmm |
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Ed heads out for one last brush with death. |
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Wow, ridin the waves! |
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Headinb back. |
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One last brave soul thumbs his nose at Posidon. |
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Moon snail on a kelp branch. |
Ever more sea stars. |
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1:01pm. Cool! We survived. |
Plenty more walking that we could do, but it's time to head to the Chowder House. |
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Hi Lisa! Ok, ok, we can go get some dry shoes and chowder now! |
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Back along the beach to Half Moon Bay. That's all she wrote.... |
The weather reports were surprisingly useful. They called for a drop to 30% chance of rain from 10am-1pm. That's precisely when the blue skies opened up. Weather Report |
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The Event Report for Half Moon Bay
By: Dean McCully Hi Everybody Thanks for RSVPing for last Sunday's Half Moon Bay Negative Tide Day. Special thanks to those of you who braved the nastiest storms we've seen in a while and joined us on the reef in spite of black skies in the morning. In spite of the cats and dogs that fell from the sky early in the morning, believe it or not, the rains totally stopped at 10am and the blue skies opened up to usher in a glorious event. Go figure. I guess somebody upstairs wanted us to see the reef in all its glory. An unprecidented 280.5 people RSVPed for the trip, so we were fearful that so many people showing up might get us arrested for staging some kind of protest. But the morning rains kept most away, and in the end, 76 people showed up. (Who's the '.5' you might ask? Somebody signed up their kid even though they were 50/50 chance of showing up.) So by 11am, 76 intreped storm-bravers had gathered in 1 of our 2 parking lot meeting places, and off we went along the beach to do some beach combing on our way to walking the reef. Our first stop on the beach was something I'd never seen before: some guy digging 'ghost shrimp' out of the sand. I had no idea there were burrowing shrimp in the sand of Half Moon Bay, but sure enuf: he had a bucketful of 'em. I guess they're good for fish bait, or so he said. After a ~1 mile of beach combing, we finally reached the reef. Boy, what a show! It always astonishes me that the world famous 'Boneyard' of Mavericks, normally under 10+/- feet of water, flushes out and becomes walkable every so often. The anonemae and the sea stars and the urchins and the mussels were out in force. As always. Moon snails slithered everywhere, as did their interloper shell-stealing nemesis hermit crabs. The crabs wait for the snails' demise, then the crabs rip off their shells as mobile homes. We didn't see any eels, but we did see a harbor seal sunning itself on the rocks. All in all it was a great day, inspite of a soggy start. We posted pictures here for your enjoyment. (Sorry that they're a little grainy but I posted thumbnails in low res to save server disk space.) http://www.eyeyak.com/photogallery/kayak/halfmoonbay-02-07/index.htm We hope you can join us on another negative tide day soon. We'll most definitely host another before the end of the year, the next time the low tides line up with a weekend is a few months out, but we'll let you know when everything lines up. Cheers Dean McCully & Lisa Bickford PS Here's another item that may be of interest. We've obtained special permission from the Don Edwards Game Preserve and the Sta Clara County's 'Adopt-A-Creek' project to gain special access to a normally off-limits slough in the Don Edwards preserve, and host a Slough Cleanup Day on March 17 & 18. The sloughs are rather dirty this time of year, the winter rains having washed thousands of plastic bottles, sports equipment, you name it into the slough. We attack the sloughs with kayaks, motorboats, and walking people who scour the levees and waterways to get all the debris bagged and tossed into the County's dumptrucks. FREE TSHIRTS for all comers, and a rare chance to see a normally off-limits slough. I'll send details in a couple days after we finalize details. We hope you'll be able to join us on one or the other of these great days. |
Copyright© 2006 EyeYak.com All rights reserved
Note: This event report does not necessarily reflect the opinions of EyeYak or any owners or subsidiaries. EyeYak is not related to any other club, organization, company, or anything anybody on this planet has ever heard of. And that's the truth. Your mileage may vary. Have a nice day.
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