As many people have been doing lately, I have been combining home school activities with my professional life in new ways. I find myself looking for teaching opportunities and connections to education even more so than ever. While cooking dinner, I talk about fractions; while paying bills, I talk about decimals; and while writing articles, I talk about editing – and about where ideas from stories come from.

On a walk along the shore with my daughters after doing an art project, I found myself looking at the splashes of color on the rocks. I have often painted rocks with my girls, adding bright colors and designs, but hadn’t thought about the natural paints that decorate the rocks naturally. There are wonderful patterns in the rocks themselves – rivulets of quartz and even natural garnets the speckle through, but the colors that often go unnoticed and are truly remarkable are the crustose algae. These are algae that literally form a crust on top of a rock.

Crustose algae are some of the toughest members of the intertidal community. One of the most common species is also the least conspicuous – the tar spot. It really does look like a black spot and can be found under water in tide pools and surrounding rocks. Algae can be a lot of colors, and it’s hard to believe that this one is technically a red alga, although sometimes it can be brighter in color. It’s also hard to believe that it is alive. Tar spot looks more like a stain that something that can photosynthesize. Nonetheless, it helps to decorate rocks in the intertidal in a whimsical way.

The other common species along our shore is coral weed. It is usually pink in color and similarly forms a crust on intertidal rocks. But, one of the neatest things about coral weed is that it is a shape shifter. As a senior in college, I did a research project where I studied the odd growing patterns of coral weed. Unlike tar spot, coral weed has some calcium carbonate in it (much like a coral) that gives it a bit of structure. That means that it can support different shapes. When the conditions are calm, it forms tiny little ferns that wave under the surface. You might have found the “skeletons” of this form once they are bleached white attached to pieces of washed up seaweed. But, in a wave-crashed area, these tiny algae change their growing pattern and instead cling tightly to the rock in a bumpy crust. The very same plant can develop in very different ways in order to adapt to a certain set of conditions.

I have always been impressed with coralline algae, but now as we all attempt to shape shift in response to the current pandemic, perhaps there is a natural teacher here? It’s hard not to seek those positive messages wherever they may be found right now and always nice to find them in a beautiful place. For now, the art lesson out of this shore walk is to take a few rocks home and paint them to hide in the woods for friends to find – to pass on a bit of the coast and ourselves at a time when we can’t do it in person.