May 24, 2016

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A quiet afternoon on the beach, though the campground looked almost full. There was very little manmade debris to be seen. The largest was a rubber pipe about 2" in diameter and approx. 7' long lying at the bottom of the N stairs to the beach. It looked to be tsunami debris, as it was covered with what seemed to be very small, dried-up organisms. I left it beside a garbage can. The drift line was littered along most of the mile with the bodies of sand crabs (photo.) There were also a few claws and shells of “conventional” crabs (don’t know which kind). This was the first time in a while that I’d seen pebbles on the beach, and as I am a rockhound, my awareness of my surroundings wasn’t the sharpest. It wasn’t until I was on my way back that I began noticing small piles of seaweed — not kelp; it was something unfamiliar to me (photo). In and around those piles were Velella velella, most of them half-buried in the sand (photo). There weren’t nearly as many as I’m used to seeing. The “mindfulness” message I saw carved into the cliff on my last visit seems to have inspired another feel-good vandal (photo). The big chunks of cliff that came down in the winter storms are slowly being worked over by wind and rain. On my return, I noticed that riprap had probably been added at the bottom of the campground's N steps. Hard to imagine how else the sign at the back of the pile got crushed (photo).