I've always enjoyed tidepooling since I was a young kid - and once I left foggy northern California to go to Montana, an extremely land-locked state, I realized how lucky I was to have world-class tidepools just a half hour drive from my parent's house. I didn't have the opportunity in New Zealand (tidepools, yes, but no car) and here in South Carolina, we don't have any water clarity - and, to be honest, a pretty depauperate marine invertebrate fauna in comparison to the Pacific coast. Since our very belated honeymoon a few years ago to the Bahamas and our subsequent Caribbean Spring Break snorkeling trips, I've gotten more and more interested in it, and in 2022 Sarah and I bought Olympus TG6 cameras, recommended to me by Dr. Maureen Berg, a biologist at UC Berkeley who spends a bit of time tidepooling at some of my favorite spots - but with much higher success at finding nudibranchs. Until about three years ago, I had only ever seen one or two nudibranchs in the wild - I was thoroughly unimpressed when I was a kid, seeing a couple of yellow gelatinous blobs. While paddling a canoe in Drake's Estero with Dick Hilton in 2011 (just a month after Sarah and I got married, and a few months before we left for NZ), Dick noticed an opalescent nudibranch on a frond of giant kelp - and I was mesmerized. I had seen photographs, but never one in person - I couldn't believe how beautiful the little creature was. I really got hooked only a few years ago: on a visit to Fitzgerald Marine Preserve (Moss Beach, CA) on a good minus tide with Sarah (and about 200 of our closest friends - new years, 2022), we found about a dozen nudibranchs - all of them some of the 'boring' ones - sea lemons, Monterey dorids, an orange peel dorid, and a few San Diego dorids. That visit was the one where I decided I needed an underwater camera. In December 2022 and 2023 I visited a spot in Half Moon Bay a friend of mine recommended - I'll keep the location a secret for the time being (sorry!) since it's much less frequented. But, it's a good one: tons and tons of nudibranchs.
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