Albert Bay has been home for almost a week. We anchored in the center of this idyllic bay with a two-point anchor spread to keep our head into the swell and we’ve seen no reason to leave.  We get a light east breeze during the day and at night, a delicious warm land breeze infused with sage, eucalyptus and occasionally skunk. The skunks are a mystery, maybe they fight on the beach after the bars let out. Its dark, I’m not checking.

Half the time we’ve had the place to ourselves, the sole guests of our friends on the shallow kelp rocks two boat lengths astern.

Without the ship’s naturalist we’re guessing at their names but…

clearly a Bluefish

in another ocean, we would have called this a Cow Nose Ray

A sculpin-shaped rock imitator.

 

A wee anemone in the holdfast of a kelp.

Wee yellow schoolers in a kelp garden

Wee yellowtailed blue schoolers in a kelp garden

We know these as: Sardinyweenies

Grunnions? Juvenile Sardinyweenies? Who knows?

This nudibranch was searching for the seabush to his left  using his highly developed sense of chance…

 

so that he could wreak havoc on its delicious soft coraline goodness, leaving a black trail of nudibranch death and carnage! If they only had better eyes these little blue and orange jellybellies would rule the world.

Anemones with sand in their mouths. It must be awful.

These characters had less of a school and more of a loose affiliation.

It hasn’t always been sunny, but a bit of fog makes the hot days better.