Here is a video of our research site from yesterday.  It is pretty typical of the rocky intertidal at the Farallones.

Today we monitored at Low Arch, it was beautiful.  Carol and I found a brooding six-rayed seastar (Leptasterias hexactis) while we were counting invertebrates in one of our quadrats. This species of seastar holds on to her eggs near her mouth until they are fully developed.  She had a tiny granite pebble protecting the eggs!  When we got back to the house we compared our permanent quadrat photos from this year and last.  We noticed a dramatic decrease in the number of mussels in at least one of our sites this year.  We will have to analyze all of our data and look at our many years of photos (16 years) to understand this change, but it is the fewest mussels we have ever seen in this quadrat.