the deep...

I know God has a great imagination! If you have any thoughts of doubt about that, just take a look at the platypus...or the ostrich... or the venus flytrap...or so many other strange and wonderful creatures that can be found on this earth...or under the earth...or in the sky... or, as I saw today... IN THE DEEP!!!

I watched an amazing dvd today of THE DEEP (BBC's The Blue Planet, "The Deep")... some of the very deepest parts of the ocean. There were incredible and strange worlds down there that only the greatest Creative mind could have imagined and designed! Creatures adorned with beautiful colors and lights, wild and wacky toothy creatures, and entire ecosystems existing--living, growing!--without any use of sunlight whatsoever!

They said that more people have been into space than have ventured into these worlds in the deep sea. What an incredible thought! And, to me, even more spectacular is that God created all of these unusual and crazy and lovely creatures knowing that very few human eyes would ever see them--for His own delight and pleasure!

" So God created the great creatures of the sea

and every living and moving thing

with which the water teems..."

~Genesis 1:21

These photos are of just two of the wild and crazy fish found in the depths of the sea! Look at those giant eyes and that glowing "fishing lure" (on the head of the Anglerfish)!

I found a short clip from the dvd, and it is well worth watching just to whet your appetite for the strange and wonderful world of THE DEEP!!! (I especially love the amazing red jellyfish in this clip!)

(if you would like to see more incredible discoveries, watch the other clips on Youtube or order the dvd on Netflix! it really is amazing!)

other captured creatures...

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we did manage to capture a few non-lobster creatures while we were trying to catch the quick and elusive legal-size lobsters. I, of course, had my camera with me, and I had to photograph the other creatures we netted as well.

Please note, none of these creatures were harmed in any way. They were merely dragged from their evening swims up onto the dock, shot (ok, photographed) by me, perhaps poked and petted a bit, and then sent back into the ocean on their merry way. I felt like it was an aquatic version of Wild Kingdom -- Marlin Perkins would have been delighted, I think! (ah, I'm probably dating myself here, but we watched that show every Sunday evening when I was a little kid)

And so, here, for your viewing pleasure, I introduce a few Catalina Island ocean creatures....

the ever-present Calico Bass...

our glass bottom boat tour guides say he can be recognized by his "cheap striped sportcoat".

(I caught this one, and though he looks a bit dead, he was perfectly active and fine! I think he was playing possum!)

...oh my goodness! what the heck is that?!?!?

here it is up-close-and-personal...

it's a spider crab.

These are slow-moving and non-aggressive, and I found it quite delightful. I think this one may be old, as I see it has lost one of its back legs and a couple of "toes." It seemed perfectly fine with me touching it and even picking it up. These crabs have hook-shaped hairs on their backs that attract the growth of algae which is used as camoflage.

I see it is a beautiful sky blue color underneath the algae camoflage.

And look at those red toes!

...and this is because I just HAD to pick it up!

(I had the gloves on for the lobster-grabbing.)

See how big it is!!

It was quite heavy, too!

Last, but definitely not least, was my very favorite sea creature we caught--

which, at first, we thought was a sea slug...

it's a sea hare !

I thought this was so cute! It was blobby and squishy and soft with a velvety soft wet skin. A boy who was there when this was brought up said, "It feels like pudding!" That was a most accurate description of the feel of it! If you look closely at its skin, you can see a lovely brown spotted pattern with reddish-pink through it as well. It really was strange and wonderful! (I had seen one of these at our local aquarium, but this one was at least five times bigger than the one they let us touch.)I hope you enjoyed this little "tour of the sea" with me!
I do so love to see the amazing creatures God has made...
so very many strange and delightful and colorful and wild!
I'm glad He's so very creative!!

"bugged"...in a good way!

This past weekend I went to Catalina Island to visit some friends and to have some fun. We went for a drive out in the interior of the island, and it was green and lovely! (photos later this week) And then Saturday night I got to try something new and a bit unusual...

For the past couple of years one of my friends has been trying her hand at lobster fishing with a hoop net off the boat dock. She has been inviting me to join her, and this--the final weekend of this year's lobster season--was finally my first time!

Right at about sunset we dressed warmly and headed out to the boat dock with all our supplies: hoop net, squid for bait, a great big bucket, hot chocolate, and a few other things. We met another friend, D, out there, and he was already fishing for a fish or two to use as additional bait. He brought one in (a bonita) right as it was getting dark, and we were all set for catching our "bugs." (that's what lobsters are 'affectionately' called--because that's what they look like and what they sound like, too!)

Here am I, sporting D's fish, looking like I'm quite the fisherwoman! (note the famous Casino building in the background)

This is what a lobster net looks like: The bait goes in the little section in the middle of the net. You drop the net into the water and let the rope out until the net has settled on the ocean floor. The rope is then tied to a railing or whatever is handy to which to secure it. And then, you wait a little bit for the lobsters to show up for dinner. The unsuspecting lobster notices a delicious squid and bonita dinner and walks across the net to take a nibble or two.
While the lobster is down below munching on calamari, we were up on the dock waiting for a bit of time to pass. After 5 or 10 minutes (I was rather excited and impatient to try my hand at this) you VERY QUICKLY grab the rope and fast, fast, fast! pull the net up out of the water... ideally, catching up the feasting lobster. And hopefully, you will have something like this in the net:

My first one (a GIANT one, by the way!) was not IN the net but hanging on the outside of the net. As soon as I had pulled the net up out of the water, we all cheered at the big bug on the net! And then we all cried out in dismay as he casually let go and fell back into the water. So sad. He would have been a tasty one! : )

As you can see in the photos above and below, our lobsters do not have claws. It makes them much less scary to pick up, though I was still quite trepidatious to grab one out of the net! They are very active and quick and strong, and they don't really like to be handled! I did get the hang of it, though, I didn't pick up the biggest ones we caught...they were just a bit too intimidating for me!

Between the three of us, we probably brought in about 20-25 lobsters that night. Only about 4 of them were of legal size to keep. We had several that were just a little tiny bit too small, and they were tempting... but we threw them back to grow some more. This big girl below was the prize of the night...

Look at the size of that beauty!!

And in the background, you can see the face of the one who caught her...

Look at the size of the smile on D's face!

I'll bet he was thinking about the size of that tail

and what a tasty treat it was going to be!!
So, this is me...bravely (ha!) holding a lobster up for a photo...

and it's not holding as still as it looks!

What a beauty!

(in an odd lobstery sort of way!) I think I caught the bug (ha!) for this lobster fishing thing that night! It was a good time out in the fresh sea air under the dark cover of night...the sound of ocean waves, the stars overhead...good friends, good atmosphere...

and good eating later this week!

...and maybe tomorrow I'll show you what else we caught in our lobster nets!

reaching upward and outward...

On my recent trip to Arizona, I snapped quite a few photos. One that I really like was a photo of an Acacia tree blossom. I loved it's tiny little fingers reaching up to the sky.



As I was looking at the tree blossom photo on my computer, I kept feeling as though I had seen another of my photos that gave me the same feeling. I dug through my aquarium photo archives and pulled up the photo below:

Two photos.

Two very different subjects-- one a tree blossom and one a sea star.
Both born of the same Creator.
Both reaching upward, outward...reaching for something...

Reaching for sustenance--
one for miniscule sea creatures to eat,
one for sunshine with which to photosynthesize and make food.

Both reaching upward and outward... for life.

We, too, are born of the same Creator.
We, too, reach upward, outward...reaching for something...

Reaching for sustenance... reaching for LIFE.

Hear my cry for mercy as I call to you for help,

as I lift up my hands toward your Most Holy Place.

~Psalm 28:2

I will praise you as long as I live,

and in your name I will lift up my hands.

~Psalm 63:4

I lift up my hands to your commands,

which I love,

and I meditate on your decrees.

~Psalm 119:48

Lift up your hands in the sanctuary

and praise the LORD.

~Psalm 134:2

May my prayer be set before you like incense;

may the lifting up of my hands

be like the evening sacrifice.

~Psalm 141:2

Let us join with creation as we reach upward, outward...

Let us lift our hands and reach out for LIFE...

the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

collecting shells...

It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire.

~Robert Louis Stevenson

wild (weird?) and wonderful...

On my recent trip to the Central coast of California, we stopped at one of my very favorite places--a little town called Cambria. Actually, my favorite part of Cambria is Moonstone Beach. It is a wonderful stretch of beach with continuous wave song and several miles of boardwalk as well as the beach itself to walk on. The sand is not really even sand but bazillions (I don't know a higher number!) of teeny tiny stones. The beach has been a rock collector's, treasure hunter's dream for me! Most of the stones are rounded and smooth, unlike any other place I've found, and there are quite wonderful colors --but with a predominance of glorious jade-green colored stones.

This time, however, was quite different. As with most beaches, the beach itself can change drastically from visit to visit --shape, height of tide, condition of the beach. This time the great areas of larger stones which usually keep me occupied for hours (as I sit in the middle of a pile and dig through the layers looking for special and unique stones) were not there. The beach was mostly just the teeny tiny "sand" stones.

We did, however, get to see something a bit wild and weird and, I thought, quite wonderful...

Hmmmmm... Check these out! There were many, many of these little objects strewn across the beach right at the water line where the waves had dropped them.
Animal? Vegetable? Mineral? The sun was striking them so that they appeared to be glowing from within. They were quite beautiful, and I liked to imagine that they were many glowing moonstones on the beach.

But, no... Mineral, they were not. And, upon closer look and a bit of curious poking, I determined that neither were they Vegetable...

I had seen these things before, but not in such abundance. They actually are Animal... a type of jellyfish. They do not have tentacles, and I believe they are a much less developed jelly (a lower life form) than what we're used to seeing.
If you poke them (which, I, of course, HAD to do!), they are very firm, like a piece of hard but pliable rubber. They're not gooey or slimey but smooth and cool. And, if you look closely at them, they've got lovely striations running through them... (the following two and the flower one you can double click on and look at them up really close! they're really quite amazing!!)

(you can also see what I was talking about in regards to the "sand" on this beach)

I think the one below looks sort of like a seashell in shape...

And this one was very cool! It was very 3dimensional and looked sort of like a big blobby bulbous flower of some sort! It even has a few streaks of a pinkish-purple color running through it. (unfortunately, Blogger is turning some of my photos; this one and the following one are sideways)

For all you Heart lovers and seekers, check this out... (imagine it turned 90degrees counter clockwise!)....

And the final one ... obviously a treasure just for ME!!.... (ok, I'll share it with you!)

God has such a great sense of humor, don't you think?! Not only does He create such wild and weird stuff, He dredges it up from the deep, tosses it onto the beach, and gives us a little art show with it! And wraps it all up with LOVE.... Ah, He does delight my heart...

a whole lot of lying around...

...and so, with this last post about the seals, I share with you what they do a whole lot of while they're on the beach... in between fighting, birthing babies, taking care of pups, defending turf, flipping sand, and occasionally chasing away a male challenger, there is a whole lot of 'down time' to conserve energy... in other words--lying around.

This, actually, is pretty much what I looked like most of the day today...ahhhhh...Saturdays!

And, now and then, in between naps, there is a bit of this--very entertaining traveling across the beach. I like to call it "galumphing," and it never ceases to cause me to smile!

Then, there MUST be more of this...

...don't know about you, but this little pup's all ready for some more nappage...

* * YAWN!! * *

And, with that happy ending, I shall make tracks... er, take my leave...

(I couldn't resist this wonderful set of tracks made by one of the alpha males!)