At low tide, we would wade through the shoals and carefully lift the rocks to see what was hidden underneath. Under each rock, we found a wide variety of tiny creatures, including glowing worms, tiny rock suction cups and brightly colored nudibranchs, a species of sea slug. Craig also showed me how to track animals through egg blocks. He used a sea hare as a teacher and showed me how these squid-like squids, which look like glowing slugs, are always close to their eggs. Whenever we see glowing yellow, spaghetti-like eggs, we quickly find our parents hiding nearby.
What interested me most was Craig's fascination with these seemingly insignificant animals. When I asked him about it, he told me that he found them more attractive than sharks and whales. This is a very unusual admission for someone who has spent a long time with some of the biggest predators in the ocean. I was a little skeptical, and couldn't help but wonder if what he said was really true.
We sat quietly on the rocks together and began to observe the very interesting animal behavior in the pond. We watched as the anemones waged slow-motion warfare, whipping each other with poisonous stinging cells. At one point, we observed a giant starfish crawling on a rock, chasing a snail with a fine top shell. When they reached the edge of the rock, the snail did not slide over the edge, but jumped into the abyss. They leave footprints on the beach, then tumble through the water column and finally land safely on the sand. Because starfish's feet were slimy, it couldn't release itself or make the same jumps, so the top shell won the lead.
When the pursuit was over, we noticed that one of the top shells had landed vertically on the beach, and no amount of "spinning" its upside-down feet could make it stand upright. Giant starfish move ominously down the rock, heading toward the trapped mollusk. We thought the little animal's game was over, but then a surprising thing happened: another, larger top shell flipped over, allowing the trapped animal to grab hold of the shell and hitchhike to safety.
The starfish realized that it could not run the topmost shell, so it turned its attention to a nearby stationary sea urchin, which covered itself with an empty cap shell. Starfish's arm was raised on the back of the urchin, apparently to hunt it down. Its sticky feet grabbed the protective shell and pulled it off the back of the sea urchin, giving the thorny creature an important guarantee of escape. The neighboring sea urchins were not so lucky and did not have a protective layer. The starfish easily surrounded it. The starfish eats in amazing ways, squeezing its own stomach and slowly beginning to digest the sea urchin from the outside.
These small stone pond natural "reality shows" show the lion being killed in slow motion. It's like watching a psychedelic Star Wars movie in a bowl of water. After a day of wandering, watching, playing and stalking, we were exhausted by the wind but felt calm. The key to getting into this state seems to be the way the day unfolds aimlessly.
I thought about some questions about aimlessness and how the game is inherently aimless. Watching these little animals look for their next meal, I began to discover that nature has a playful side. I began to think that if we all had the same aimless, playful attitude, then we would be more in line with Craig's "original design."
Excerpts and photos from Underwater Wildlife by Craig Foster and Ross Frylink