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Anemones are one of the more otherworldly creatures I can imagine… which I suppose makes sense, as they are from another world, a more watery one of ocean and sea. Some varieties are more regular visitors to our terrestrial world than others, living a double life at the tides edge.

Anemones are those denizens of the tide pools that draw and fascinate us

It is this life at the joining of two worlds that helps us to know them. Nothing is more fun to a child than an exploration of tide pools, glimpsing, hunting into the unknown. And little returns an adult to that child hood state than peeking into these windows to life in the depths.

Some anemones can protect themselves from drying out at low tide by curling their arms in upon themselves and creating an alien sort of landscape

They live in a harsh juxtaposition of environments, there at the edge of the sea, needing its salty embrace, yet forced to spend a part of their life exposed to the air, where they cannot feed and are little able to protect themselves from more than drying out from exposure. They need to be under water to even be able to support the weight of their small tentacle like armed arms. They stay there, rooted to where they can be subjected to the pounding of the surf and the tread of the unwary.

Some species get so large, or are fastened to the rocks in such a position that they cannot fully seal themselves against low tide

I know little about the thought process of an anemone, how it feels about this juxtaposition of two worlds. It has not the hard protective covering of a barnacle or a mussel, where it can seal out the aether, yet they survive- nae, they even thrive at this crossroad of the elements. Praise to the anemone, to the survivor.

A larger anemone, unable to close itself at the lower tides. Such interesting colors in an anemone

Many of these photographs I took from my kayak. Many from the land of air, but for a few I grabbed my underwater camera and descended into the depths (two or three feet of water). I hope you enjoy them.