East China Sea

Saturday we packed a lunch and drove up to Torii Beach.  (Yes, we know we have a beach three blocks away, but that one is a public beach.  Torii is on base and we rarely have to share the beach with anyone else.)  It was partly cloudy and very humid.  When the sun would peek out from behind the clouds, we were very happy the water was warm enough not to cause my teeth to chatter, but cool enough to feel refreshing.  That being said, there wasn't a great deal of water to be had anywhere near the shore. 

Lots and lots of exposed coral, which is actually very fun to wander around on.  We found some great treasures hiding in the tidal pools in the coral.  (This photo is a bit deceiving, and may be of the only water close to the shore.  We walked slightly to the right of this photo and walked on the exposed coral all the way out to what you can see in this photo.  We only had to walk through a few steps of water twice.  I should also point out that the water in this photo is only about knee deep on me.)

I spy:

A toy boat.

A fuzzy crab.

This one is a bit difficult, so I circled the crab, just to get you started.

Back to the game: 

Some neon blue fish!  (One of the great reminder that we truly do live on a subtropical island!)  And a big sea cucumber.

A baby speckled squid and a tiny red crab.

A large (relatively speaking) blue fish and a prickly sea urchin.

A hiding sea cucumber, a sea urchin, and a fuzzy crab.

Some more blue fish, a bunch of black sea cucumbers, and an amazing orange sea anemone!  (I'd never seen a real anemone of this style - only plastic ones in fish tanks.)

A pink-spined sea urchin.

And proof that I really was there photographing the incredibly blue fish - aren't my orange water socks awesomely stylish?  :)

Looking back at the shore from way out on the coral.  That green stuff is not grass - it's a type of sea weed on the coral.

And a view from the shore towards where we were way out there on the coral.  :)

The large crab in the center of this picture (yup, the one with the scary red eyes) greeted us on our way back to shore.  He wasn't quite sure he wanted to come all the way out of his coral house - couldn't blame him, he was looking like quite a tasty dinner.  Crab cakes, anyone?  :)

After wandering around on the coral for almost two hours, we were able to sit in our beach chairs for about five minutes before it started to pour on us.  Talk about good timing! 

Overall, quite the wonderful day at the beach.  And I just couldn't get enough of the bright blue fish in all the tidal pools!  Just too cool!  :)

---Arielle