Marine Nature Day

Field Trip! Over the school break, we had Marine Nature Day in Zanzibar.

God's creativity was on display for sure! We paid a local fisherman $20 and took a wooden dhow boat out to a reef off the southeastern coast.

After walking over a kilometer out to the boat at low tide, where we saw a patch of actual quicksand (nobody was lost, thank goodness!),

we met the boat, which was then pushed with long wooden poles by the captain and crew of one until they finally put up the sail and we sped out to the reef.

Look closely at the sail. It's made largely of old grain bags and even some plastic sheeting:

The kids had a great time and the fishermen found all kinds of neat sea life to show them:

While I was busy getting stung by a sea anemone, Henry tried on Len's mask.

You should know that the sting from a sea anemone doesn't go away quickly...almost three weeks later, I'm beginning to wonder if the red splotches on my calf are permanent? Note to self: try not-so-low tide next time.

Anyway, then we all walked around on some exposed rock at low tide, about 2 km out into the ocean, and saw amazing things:

A rainbow of starfish: Blue ones,

bronze with black lace,

Cool brown patterns with a bright orangey-red center. Note the many crabs and other sea creatures in these photos! They are all taken in tidal pools we saw on the rocks.

Ruby's favorite creatures were pink, and we saw many corals, fish, crabs and shells that fit her specifications:

Don't forget lavender! That's fancy for light purple if you have a six year old girl.

We found a cool cushion starfish (on the left, by Ruby's foot) and several grey starfish. I'm not sure why they're called grey starfish since the real attractions are the neon red knobs all over them.

A beautiful, living shell in glorious technicolor:

Can you find a dozen crabs in this photo?

A sea urchin at low tide - the spikes are held on by a shock-cord-like tendon:

This was the coolest crab I've ever seen. Haven't been able to identify it...its eyes were like tie-dyed red, green and black disks, and there were some kind of mollusks growing all over it, giving it the appearance of patchwork. I'm not sure what was going on with it. Maybe it was diseased and being eaten by the disks. Maybe they were UFO's and I narrowly missed being earthling-napped. I just know this was the coolest looking animal I've ever seen.

Finally, this little guy deserves an honorable mention for persisting in trying to eat my foot.

The kids helped me identify all the photos we took of our marine life nature walk, then we wrapped up the day with a good bedtime story and sweet dreams....