Location Taken: Beach at Olympic National Park, Washington
Time Taken: June 2008
The tidal pools along the Washington Pacific coastline are filled with life. Sea anemones, starfish, crabs, and lots and lots of rock-clinging shellfish.
The latter provide food for the starfish, who cling to them, slowly prying out their dinners, even as the water comes and goes. There’s not much motion when there’s no water, but the animals are fine, they’re used to such vagaries in their homes.
These Pacific starfish are very different from the ones I’m used to. I am not much of a beach person, and this part of the Atlantic coast doesn’t have much in the way of tidal pools anyway, so I only really encountered them in aquariums. Usually in the touch pools, where you can reach in and feel the animals.
Which means a very careful selection of which species are put in the pools, and color is not high on the list. Durability and lack of aggressiveness are pretty high, I’d say. But this means most of the starfish I’ve seen are browns and tans and not the brilliant colors of the ones in this picture.
I was a bit startled to see these wild starfish, just hanging out looking for food, glitter like gems. And they are beautiful. I’m quite fond of the colors, both the dusty rose and the muted violet, and the white tracing looks a lot like lace. If you put these on the wall, people would mistake it for art.
Which may be another reason why the touch pools at the aquariums use boring colored animals. If they used the pretty ones, people might grab them to take home, and not just for dinner.
I might just want to use this coloration in some of my art, though… Hmm… Starfish jewelry…
