negative tide

today we went to cholla bay for negative tide.  negative tide is when the tide is so low that it’s considered negative.  so you can walk out to where you would ordinarily be 25-30 feet below water.  which means you can find tons of sea creatures all over the place.  right as we got to cholla bay this lady stopped and talked to us because she saw our kansas license plate, and told us she was from johnson county, kansas.  small world!  they were going clamming, which meant they were going to dig around and collect clams for dinner.  i don’t like clams, but if i did i think it would be neat to “catch” your own dinner.  but we were there to explore.  we walked out almost a mile before we really found anything exciting.  we had finally reached our first sand dollar bed.  giant whole sand dollars just below the surface of the water.  oh, but first i glanced over and saw something bright colored covered in sand.  it was a starfish!  then i found 2 sand dollars.  i was also looking for pretty shells.  and there were lots of big whole shells all over.  i found this one that i think was a clam.  the outside was jagged and it wasn’t very pretty, but it was a whole shell with something living inside.  since i don’t really like clams, and it wasn’t very pretty, i threw it back.  but then i found this shinny striped shell that was open, but both sides were still intact.  in the bag it went.  then i found a shell that looked the exact same as my stripped one, except it was closed.  i held it for a second and it was like the shell was breathing.  crazy. so i thought maybe a piece of sand slipped in and maybe there was a pearl! so i put it in my bag too.  then i run over to dustin and ellen and see what they’re staring at.  it was a sea horse!  unbelievable.  dustin didn’t even think they really existed.  he said “i  thought sea horses were like unicorns…”  nope, not true, because we saw a live one just swimming around.  then i go to check in my bag to make sure nothing has broken and i look and see the two identical shells, both open!  there is a clam crawling around somewhere in my bag!  and then i saw it.  this slimmy blob stuck to my water bottle.  but then i noticed it had eyes.  i don’t know a lot about clams, but i did not picture them like this.  as i scoop it back into it’s shell i realize it is a baby OCTOPUS!  he was just hanging out in my bag.  i accidentally dropped him in the water and he inked and started swimming away.  i couldn’t let him get away before getting a picture, so i scooped him up and he sucked onto my hand.  in a way, he was kinda cute.  but he was also slimmy and disgusting.  i wasn’t sure how long they could live out of water, so i dipped him back in so he could “breathe”.  bad move.  because when i took my hand out of the water he suctioned on my hand so hard it felt like needles all over.  so i shook him off and then dropped his shell near him so he could crawl back in.   it was crazy.  apparently these little octopus’ hang out in these shells when they’re babies because i found another identical shell with one inside.  with all of our exciting discoveries we kinda felt like we we’re on the discovery channel, but it was just another day in penasco.