Informing and inspiring everyone about California’s underwater world
Pyrosomes: underwater UFO strikes a nerve cord
Pyrosomes typically hang suspended in the water column. They are stealth travelers, using tiny hairs found within the hollow tube to propel themselves. c.TideLines.org
Those of you who have made contact with an extraterrestrial being at one time or another likely agree that the experience was completely unexpected. That is exactly how I felt when on a dive some years ago I saw this “thing” hanging in the water...
San Diego’s Northern Channel Islands
Across from the mainland city of Santa Barbara, the changing coastlines and sea levels of ancient Santarosae contrast with its modern appearance of four discrete islands. ©Todd Braje, PhD
It’s a matter of paternity. Though four of California’s Northern Channel Islands—San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, and Anacapa—today reside off the coast of Santa Barbara, their lineage is San Diego.  Travel back 20 million years (a long time but...
A salty pretzel but hold the mustard
It doesn’t look like there’s much of a connection to us but each individual cell that makes up this colonial radiolarian, <em>Solenosphaera collina</em>, has the same complex organelles as those found in our own cells. c. 2019 www.TideLines.org
Weirdly, on this diving day, as I briefly hovered above the silty seafloor at about 60 feet deep, floating in the water before me was a tangled, gelatinous strand. Could it be a tentacle somehow lost by a jelly animal? I captured some images with...
Holy cow! A cattle egret lands at La Jolla Shores
cattle egret at La Jolla Shores. c.TideLines.org
This is the Shores, not the Savannah. Nevertheless, the second week of June, I arrived to the beach at daybreak and saw what I thought was a snowy egret standing in front of the restrooms. Odd that it wasn’t foraging at the shoreline and that some...
My Mission

To share my knowledge with readers through photographic documentation and writing that blends personal experience, humor, and current science research.

Images copyrighted ©1980-2023 Judith Lea Garfield unless otherwise noted.
All rights reserved worldwide.Site by Construxit