Sea School

We were out on our dock recently when we saw a sea urchin that was close enough for me to get.  I didn’t want to kill it, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to let the boys check it out up close and personal.
So I grabbed a pair of metal tongs and a container and popped him off of the pillar.

I love that we are able to do these things and I hope they boys will remember some of the things we do here.

We saw that when the sea urchin is submerged it has little white suction cups that come out in between its spikes.  Cool!
I also had to include pictures of Jackson being goofy.  I just love the color of his eyes.  So rich!


It's tough to see, but there are also these clear-ish long tentacles that come off of the urchin too.  They are almost like hairs that you can barely see on the left side of this picture.

Miller wasn’t feeling well, but I did manage to get him to check out the sea urchin for a minute.
Then daddy came home from work and he checked it out too.

They turned him over to look at the sea urchin’s mouth.

Apparently Sea Urchin {uni} is a popular dish in Asia.  I’ll take their word for it!

Then it was time to put him back in the water.  Jackson would not allow me to help him.

He gently put him in the water.  This picture cracks me up because he was wearing shoes.  He never wears shoes and when he needs to be barefoot, he has on shoes!?! And socks!
Since I was barefoot, I took him a little deeper in the water.

The the 10 seconds or so that it took me to walk back around to the dock, that sea urchin moved quickly.  He was making himself disappear, and quick!
Then look what appeared in the algae on the other side of the dock…

How could I not catch him.  Raise your hand if you had a shirt that said, “I Caught Crabs at Bay Bridge Marina”.

Yes, I did!  When I was little, too.  My dad owned a marina and that’s what the shirts said. 

Wish I had one of those shirts now!

Allen helped us get crabby into the container that was very recently occupied by the sea urchin.

His colors were amazing.
I think I see a painting coming soon!
Any time our hands got near the side of the container, he let us know he was ready to fight!

I don’t blame him, but we gave him some small pieces of hot dogs as a gesture of goodwill and he acted as though he didn’t want it.  RUDE!

Meanwhile Miller wrapped himself in the tablecloth, snuggled up on my lap and went to sleep.  Bless him, he had a fever.

We put the crab back in the water and put he boys to bed.  I hope they had sweet dreams of adventures in the sea!