The morning was gloomy and cold. After buying some stuff in one of the supermarkets on the outskirts of Medulin, my hometown ...
... I drove towards the village of Premantura to take a walk by the sea.
Tashalera is a summer campsite on the coast a kilometer or two from that village. I left the car at the entrance ...
... walked through the pine grove ...
... and spent an hour in one of the inlets. The tide was very low ...
... so I had some fun photographing the creatures from the intertidal zone. Here you can see a small group of sea snails from the Trochidae family. I'm not sure about the species. It could be the Phorcus turbinatus. Or the Phorcus articulatus. Or the Phorcus mutabilis, maybe. I don't know. They are all very similar. Phorcus mutabilis, for example, looks a lot like a young Phorcus articulates which changes as it grows much bigger than the snails shown in this photograph.
Here you can see a mix of big and small snails. And a group of small mussels too.
Here you can see a small snail that climbed on top of another, just a slightly bigger one.
This is probably the smallest of the snails I found in the inlet. In the following photograph ...
... you can take a look at the scenery across the bay. The houses shown in this photograph belong to the village called Pomer.
Here you can see some bigger apartment buildings on the outskirts of Pomer. These are made for summer rentals. Well, mostly for that, I think.
In this photograph, you can see a sea anemone near the edge of the shallow water of the inlet. As the small waves made by the tide were gently massaging the shore, the anemone's tentacles were swaying like grass in the wind.
Anemonia sulcata is the name of this very common Mediterranean species.
The anemones shown in this photograph were completely stranded so they withdrew their tentacles while waiting for the sea to return. Some of them were hanging like jelly from the rocks.
I found the stranded Anemonia sulcata on the rocks that form the base of the only pier in Tashalera.
If you enlarge this photograph by clicking on it, you'll be able to see more details of the stranded sea anemone's anatomy.
These red sea anemones (Actinia equina) were stranded on the flat rocks of the inlet.
Here you can see some lovely buoys that were floating about thirty-forty meters from the pier. In the following photograph ...
... you can admire the same group of buoys and a bit of the scenery across the bay.
I remember seeing only pines in Tashalera. No deciduous trees. But this oak leaf somehow ended up on the shore. Maybe was brought by the sea from some other part of the bay.
In the right part of this enlargeable shot, you can see a limpet. A sea snail from the Patellidae family. I'm pretty sure that this is a Patella caerulea limpet. Pretty but not completely, sure. In the left part of the picture, you can see a well-camouflaged chiton. A Chiton olivaceus, probably. Chitons are marine mollusks in the class Polyplacophora. They are not snails. They are not clams. A chiton is its own thing. Both mollusks, the limpet & the chiton, can adhere firmly to the rock and are hard to remove. That's great protection from the predators and the strong waves that sometimes hit the shore. The shell of the limpet shown in this photograph is partially covered with some kind of crust that looks a bit like a lichen.
I found more of that crust on the surrounding rocks. The thing looks like algae from the order Corallinales. That's all I can tell you about it. I mean, it's certainly algae, but what kind of algae - I don't know.
Here you can see another limpet. Just like the algae in the previous shot, this one was photographed in subdued natural light that required a fairly long exposure.
Here you can see another lovely Trochidae sea snail.
The small snail in this photograph has climbed the empty shell of the Venerupis decussata clam. Living clams spend their adult life buried in the muddy sand under the layer of stones and pebbles. The larvae drift with the currents. In the following photograph ...
... the focus is on the scenery across the bay. Here you can see the old pines in one of the campsites of Medulin.
Here you can see some boats in the harbor of my hometown.
These two snails were nicely posing on a white little stone that provides a nice background on which the mollusks are clearly visible. They look much better here than on the surrounding greenish stones covered with tiny algae.
This green alga from the Ulvaceae family looks like a little salad in the intertidal garden.
AND THAT'S IT. HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE WALK BY THE SEA. AS ALWAYS IN THESE POSTS ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK.