Barnacles Monochrome Monday

Going to the beach is for sure a fun time for the little man and I. We get to do a lot of great crabbing, checking out the waves, rocks and all that. It's funny some of the random pictures I end up taking though and the ones that turn out to be some decent shots!

I think the varied nature of a tidepool is pretty crazy to think about. It's not just water flowing in and out. There are species of animals, plants and others that have figured out how to live in a temporary state. What I mean by this is they are covered by water for many hours at some point during the day, and at another point in the day they are completely uncovered by water for several hours! That's a pretty wild difference when you think about it.

As humans we can adapt to these things, and I guess it's potentially arrogant of me to think that animals can't, but it's not common in my mind that something can survive for so long in both types of environments.

Bears can jump in and out of the water to swim, as can many other animals like wolves and stuff but things that live intentionally in the water, then intentionally out of the water are pretty rare conceptually to me. I guess there are likely thousands of species that fall into that category, but when we think about it, they are small species so we really don't think about them too much.

The reason for that topic though was the other day, I was at the beach with the little man and going hunting for crabs and stuff, when we ran into a nice family from a different part of the country and got to explaining some of the things to them. It got me thinking how complicated the environment really is!

There are so many things we take for granted, it's pretty wild. The planet we live on is a wonderful place, but it is for sure complicated when it's so full of life the way it is. There are varied conditions all over the place, and there are local species of plants and animals that adapt to those. I think we don't give these species enough credit when it comes down to it.

There are varying conditions all the time. For political and control reasons they try to say that we are in an abnormal time, but in reality, there is absolutely nothing consistent about the temperature and climate of the planet. It varies constantly, and that's what it's supposed to do. These animals and plants need to adapt, the way every species adapts, or else they die. We are a very adaptive group, that's for sure! Except Pandas, those fuckers would be extinct if we weren't constantly intervening on their behalf lol. It helps they look cool.

As with any series of black and white photos though, looking at them in this light is pretty awesome. I love how the various plants, animals, lichen and fungus look in the different colors. The black and white makes it more striking in my opinion.