Hopkin's Rose

I love tide pools, and so it was highly fortuitous that this weekend's negative low tides coincided with sunny, unseasonably warm late afternoons in Half Moon Bay. The reefs at Mavericks were fully exposed, and the marine life was stunning. In addition to the lovely anemones, algae, and sea stars: a couple octopi, and many of these radiant little nudibranchs. A marine biologist was wandering around, overturning rocks, and I asked him what adaptive advantage could possibly be served by this visual attention grabbing. "Ahem," he began in professorial mode, "Often brilliant colors serve as a warning to potential predators, and may be a form of mimicry..." I.e., he was bullshitting, and might as well have said 'cuz God made 'em that way. I didn't hold it against him... his answer was incidental. I belong to the tribe that cannot attribute beauty to God, but this disbelief never diminishes my sense of wonder, and perhaps only serves to heighten it. I'd like to know why, but I do not need to.

Photo credit.