We all agree – this is a very good place to live. This is true in or out of the Salish Sea, it quickly gets complicated. Like us, underwater plants and animals need a place to call home, some solid bit of rock to take hold of and set up shop. Rocks are best because they last a long time, but they need to stay put. The millions of underwater roundish cobbles left over from the glaciers aren’t all that great – they tend to roll around in storms. Big rocks are fewer and always crowded. They’re popular places. Then we came along a built marinas, docks, pilings and all sorts of underwater stuff, and underwater plants and critters found new homes. Give nature a new place to live, and, presto, it’s covered in a few months. And I mean COVERED.

First colonizers are often simple plants with ways of latching onto a smooth piling. Barnacles move in, often in the upper tidal areas since they can tolerate considerable drying at low tide. It’s an area rejected by many others, so pilings can have thousands of barnacles near the waterline. Below this, a vast variety of plants and animals populate the rest all the way to the ground. Some even have names such as ‘encrusting’ to push the point – encrusting coral, encrusting sponge. That’s what they do – coat surfaces. Anemones are common, a dozen varieties of strange flower-like animals with stinging arms that convey food to a waiting mouth. Small crabs are here, shrimp with glowing eyes and various predators such as sea stars roam looking for a meal. Surrounding these underwater high rises are perch and rockfish, sculpins and pricklebacks. It’s a busy place and you get to easily see this by simply laying on your stomach and peering under your favorite dock. What are you waiting for?

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