Beachcombing in Central California
Most of the people visiting Mavericks beach at Pillar Point harbor probably have no idea what’s behind the hill with a huge white sphere on the top. The sphere, by the way, is a radar used to track satellites and intercontinental missiles. The parking lot on the northern part of Pillar Point harbor is usually full.
Recently we started to park our car at more remote parking lot along the road adjacent to an airfield. The place is called Pillar Point Bluff and it has several trails. So, you can either walk along the bottom of the hill on Fitzgerald Marine reserve, or turn left after passing wooden deck across a creek and can climb up to quickly reach the ridge with nice views of the harbor. This is where you can get access to the beach named Ross’ Cove. It’s quite a secluded place, if visited in the middle of the week. We enjoyed walking along the shore and looking for something interesting.

Fossilized bones are not an uncommon find in this area. This one was a central part of the whale vertebra few million years ago. Finding smoothed and tumbled pieces of abalone shells is exciting. They have vivid colors on this beach and look like gems against the dark gray background of sedimentary rocks. Beautiful patterns as well!
We tend to think about complex natural patterns as random ones. But nothing is truly random in Nature. All the complexity that we often barely comprehend is a result of multilayered, multi-directional connections on various levels starting from molecules up to interactions between different species. These holes in the mother of pearl, for example, were likely made by a boring mollusk from genus Pholadidea. According to an article published in 1913, the price for red abalone shells was from 40 to 70 dollars a ton.
The broken shells of sea urchins are remnants of somebody’s breakfast, as well as chitons missing their meaty flesh that was likely being scooped out by some sea star or a crab. The primitive mollusks chitons are fascinated creatures of tide pools – their shells consist of 8 articulated segments and riming an armor of medieval knights. But they are often hard to spot because of algal overgrowth on the top. Excellent camouflage is a great asset, but does not always help to survive.

Northern part of Ross Cove beach has rocks often occupied by harbor seals. A great place for animals to relax and keep distance from people.

One more thing, while hiking the local trails, we noticed holes in the ground. Some of them had pipes made of dirt. When we took a closer look, we noticed that these borrowings are occupied by creatures, which happen to be female digger bees. They look similar to bumblebees and built their nests underground. These are solitary bees but they often make their nests in the same place and stock them with bee-bread made of nectar and pollen to feed bee larva. Did you know that among several thousand species of bees inhabiting North America approximately 90% are solitary?

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