DIL Corinne often goes to the beach to see the sunrise. She sent me this picture the other day.
Maryann and I went back to Breach Inlet, the break between Sullivan’s Island and Isle of Palms, last Friday–and we did see one dolphin feeding under the bridge as we began our beach walk.
The wind was very high, so we got a lot of exercise walking against it. There were three hanggliders and one paraglider riding the wind currents off Sullivan’s island, but they were too far away for a picture. Hangliding is where a person is part of the flying apparatus and lies prone; paragliding is where the person sits below the sail.
The beach was smooth at this low tide, with very few tidal pools–which was witness to how the beach changes every single day. In one lone tidal puddle, we saw a live starfish. Its little tubes were wriggling like crazy when I picked it up.
The underneath was a brilliant yellow.
You can see that one arm is growing back. I found this quote from the Denver Zoo online site in a quick search online–and wikipedia has an extensive entry on starfish that describes pretty much everything about them.
“Some species of sea star have the ability to regenerate lost arms or even regenerate a whole new sea star from a single arm attached to a portion of the central disc. Regeneration is possible because each of the arms contains parts of the vital organs including the digestive tract and reproductive organs.”
The channel under the bridge is deep and dangerous. The tidal currents are very, very strong here. But this is also where the dolphins feed. Son Bryan told me the local dolphins have learned how to push a school of fish up to the steep banks here so they can trap and eat them. It is unusual, local dolphin behavior, and the pods have trained their offspring to feed in this manner.
We saw a cute little tugboat pushing a dredger up the channel so it could dig out this pier area.
No trip to the beach is ever a waste of time.
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