Flat Corrin Finds More Treasures on the Beach

Today Flat Corrin went back to the beach at low tide with Gramma Sal and Grammy. She saw seaweed growing all over the rocks. It was attached to the rocks, and very hard to pull out. One kind of seaweed was really rubbery and had little bubbles of air in it to make the seaweed stand up when the tide is high. The other kind of seaweed had big things full of something that looks like jelly, and smaller bumps with air in them. This kind of seaweed wasn't as rubbery, and Grammy showed her how Real Corrin would squeeze the bumps with air in them, and they would pop like bubble wrap.

Then Flat Corrin saw a big flat thing that looked like huge seaweed, and Grammy explained that this was called Kelp. Kelp lives in deeper water than seaweed.

Then Grammy and Flat Corrin looked under some seaweed and found little green crabs like the kind Real Corrin and her family catch when they are here. Just then, Gramma Sal came over with another green crab in her hand!

Grammy explained that these green crabs never used to be in Maine. They came over in the bottoms of boats, and now there are lots of them. The kind of crabs we eat here are big and orange.

 Then Flat Corrin found some scallop shells and a sea urchin.

After that, she found a starfish, a sand dollar, and another broken sea urchin. Grammy told her that they are all related. When the sea urchins are alive, they have long green spines that look like Christmas tree needles. They actually use these spines to crawl on the bottom of the ocean with.  The Japanese eat sea urchin eggs, which are called roe. The sand dollars are dark purple, almost black when they are alive, and they have tiny black spines on them which they walk with.

The sand dollars, sea urchins and starfish all have a hole in the bottom of them which is their mouth. The starfish can actually wrap himself around food like mussel shells and pry them open!

Then Flat Corrin found a mussel shell with coral on it. This coral isn't as pretty as the coral in Florida.

After that, Flat Corrin asked what all those little white bumps are on the rocks. Grammy told her those are barnacles. At first, Barnacles are really tiny and swim, then they find a nice place to land like a rock or boat bottom and attach themselves with a very strong glue. The barnacles look like little volcanoes, and have two little things called plates in the hole in the middle. When the water is over them, they open the plates and feathery things that look like rakes come out. They use these little rakes to catch tiny things called plankton, and drag them into the shell for food.

Real Corrin called this morning and asked Flat Corrin to bring back some smooth brick and some sea glass so her classmates could see it, so Flat Corrin picked some up to bring back with her.

Then Flat Corrin was very tired, so she sat on a rock for a while with Gramma Sal and rested.