Haifa at the beach

This weekend I went to Haifa with my neighbour Hadas, whose parents live there. I guess I should say "I went to many areas near Haifa" as I spent very little time in the city itself. We spent the first afternoon at the beach--most people in Haifa go to the beach for the sun and the swimming, but I think we had far more fun.

We went looking for creatures in the tide pools. At first we didn't find many, and Hadas was getting worried because there are usually lots of crabs and shrimps at this beach. Even with the lack of creatures, there were still lots of interesting things to look at.

I found barnacles everywhere too. There is even one growing on this shell. I don't know if anyone remembers my fascination with barnacles after hearing about them in my second year of university. I'm perhaps not so fascinated anymore, but still love finding them.

In one of the pools we were looking in, we noticed that one of the shells was moving. Finally, we had found one of the crabs! When Hadas went to look at the next pool, I had to call her back, because I realized that not just one shell was moving, but they were all moving. They were all hermit crabs! Shows what observant biologists we are...

If you flip through my pictures from this trip you would see that many of the shells I have pictures of are orange. Most of the shells there weren't orange, the orange ones just caught my eye. Seems to be becoming a pattern with me.....

But the oarnge ones are nice, aren't they?