Sea Collections: tube worm rocks and treasures.

James lives and dreams by the sea and it is highly contagious.  Every moment he has spare (and the many more moments he cannot really spare) the surf boards are strapped to the roof of the car and I am being chivied out the house and bundled into the passenger seat.  I love it, as he disappears behind the walls of white water into the green out-back, I am left to forage and hunt till my soul and bag are full.

Whilst photographing these beautiful treasures I got a bit preoccupied with the trails on this stone, they are strangely labyrinthine like a stone marble maze.  After much searching (key words such as - what are the squiggly white things on my pebble - didn't help much) I discovered that they belonged to tube worms.  These fellows knit themselves hard calcified tubes all along their length and glue themselves onto a stone or the shell of another critter, then they live in isolation in their tube.  That beautiful fan splayed out in the picture below is all that is left from a tentacle that used to poke out and grab tasty snacks from the water overhead.  Isn't that neat?  There are so many on this rock I think it must have been quite the tube-worm-party.

And on another note, one day I hope I will be able to wear a smart bag for more than five minutes without filling my bag with treasures; 'interesting' twigs, strange feathers and tube worm shells.  It truly is a mess.  I will never be able to do a 'what's in my bag' style post.