THE EYE OF THE STORM LOOKS SO INVITING!

Look how the circular eye lines up with the pond shape.

Woke up early with a spring in my step, decided to go to the beach I haven't been for a while since I have been sick.
There is nothing like being bare footed with shorts and a shirt on and feeling the sand squish as you walk along.
The salt air was relinquishing my sinuses and the soft gentle breeze was refreshing my soul.

So I looked for where I might find things and notice seaweed to the left of me and shells to the right.
This beach is called middle beach because its a cove between two other lengthy beaches, about 4oo meters long with caves at one end and rockpools at the other.

The tide was half way out and on it's way back in, there wasn't to much swell or wave activity.
So I thought I would start where the shells were first, there were foot prints before me, so someone's probably picked up the pretty shells first. That's ok because I'm looking for different things.

BLEACHED CORAL ABOUT THE SIZE OF THE PALM OF YOUR HAND.

BLEACHED CORAL

BLEACHED CORAL

So I was finding all of these small bits of coral everywhere. No one usually picks these up or looks at them because they're so fixated on the shells.

So why are they here?
The answer lies in the other direction....

So there wasn't to much that was interesting other than the coral and the storm brewing on the horizon behind me. so I headed the other way.

SO THE REASON FOR THE CORAL BEING HERE IS BECAUSE OF THE SEAWEED, BUT WHY?

Seaweed washing in with large waves an strong currents besides storm surges.
The seaweed doesn't just provide food and oxygen, it also provides a home and security to the reef systems.

Seaweed doesn't have roots it has a system called hold fast, it holds on to the reefs, other seaweed, rock and whatever will hold it down.

SEAWEED HOLD FAST, THAT'S WHY THERE IS SO MANY PIECES OF CORAL BECAUSE IT HAS COME AWAY FROM THE SEAWEED.

So what treasures did I find to take home for schooling?

I found port jackson shark eggs 2 of them empty.
The mother shark lays the egg in the seaweed and screws it in with her mouth, so once the seaweed is disturbed the shark eggs wash ashore too.

The other things I was looking for were sea sponges and I found some nice ones in the seaweed.

So you never no what you're going to find and then the fun part is learning about it. Soon I will go into more individual detail about these things.

ACTUALLY THERE WAS ONE LAST THING THAT I DID FIND AND UNFORTUNATELY IT'S QUITE COMMON, WHAT DO YOU THINK?

This is what you call human stupidity! Shameful discovery.

Context and photos by Sanddrift