74 POINT LOBOS RESERVE 



The middle zone owes much of its characteristic dark color to beds of 

 California mussels, which also cover the tops of some of the rocks off the 

 north shore, submerged at high tide. The lower part of the mussel zone is 

 covered by a dense growth of the tough brown kelp, Lessonia. 



A hardy barnacle (Mitella) grows in clusters among the mussels. Its 

 peduncle or stem is really its head by which it is cemented to rocks, and 

 its gregarious habit affords mutual protection against the pounding or 

 shearing action of waves. Feeding on both of these animals, the common 

 sea star finds the roughest coast a congenial habitat. Impact by heavy seas 

 makes no impression. It clings like a limpet by means of its hundreds of 

 sucker feet. It is purple, brown, or yellow in color. 



The closely crowded mussels are attached to the rocks by tough horny 

 threads which are spun by the long, protusible, finger-like foot. The broad- 

 ened end of the mussel is turned outward and receives the impact of waves, 

 but between the inner tapered ends there are little galleries filled with 

 relatively quiet water ; just as a strong wind passing over a thick forest 

 does not greatly disturb the quietness near the ground. In these irregular 

 arcade-like spaces live a multitude of worms: Various unsegmented flat- 

 worms ; rubber-like, soft, striped nemerteans ; green nereids, of many seg- 

 ments, armed with jaws and remotely resembling centipedes; Halosydna 

 with two rows of scales along the back ; sipunculids, sometimes called 

 "peanut worms," a misnomer. A great variety of small crustaceans, 

 isopods, amphipods, small crabs and shrim'ps are regular denizens of the 

 mussel beds, as are also small mollusks. 



In and around the mussel zone are found sea cradles (Nuttallina and 

 Katherina), limpets, reddish volcano barnacles, rock barnacles; and in any 

 little chance rock pool, greenish sea anemones, hermit crabs, and sometimes 

 small purple sea urchins. In more sheltered nooks or on quiet days the two 

 sorts of shore crabs venture alertly from hiding. They are unbelievably 

 nimble, and Pachygrapsus merits the name "Sally Lightfoot" aptly be- 

 stowed by West Indians on a near relative of identical habits. 



In the uppermost zone, w^t only by spray, are dingy little littorine snails 

 crowded in crevices for mutual protection and moisture, small limpets, 

 and (once upon a time) the large owl limpet, too, beloved of Italians and 

 shell collectors. 



In this wave-swept area, below the mussel zone, the rocks are often 

 covered with a reddish incrustation, the alga Lithophyton. In protected 

 crevices are red, yellow, and blue encrusting sponges; delicate feathery 

 growths — the hydroids and bryozoans ; soft brown colonial sea squirts ; 

 small sea cucumbers, and naked mollusks of high color. Here also are 

 found quite a range of mollusks including the black abalone, key-hole 

 limpets, leafy horn-mouth snail, top shells, short spired purple. Where the 

 rock is not too vertical, purple urchins occur, often in individual "forms" 

 hollowed from the rock. These little basins are excavated by the urchins, 

 which cling tightly with sucker feet and braced spines. 



A characteristic feature of the most wave-swept offshore rocks are the 

 miniature groves of sea palms, Postelsia, graceful kelps of unbelievable 

 toughness which bend in unison when a surge breaks over them, and then 

 spring upright as the water cascades from among the closely crowded 

 stems. They favor flat-topped rocks and benches at about mid-tide and are 

 annuals — destroyed by winter storms and renewed in the spring. 



