One summer evening Andy Gray from DSE shared his passion for marine creatures with 16 members, including five children.
As he said: ‘This is my most favourite place in the world, where the ocean meets the land.’
He started out by discussing dangers, in particular the Blue-ringed octopus. However he also explained what wonderful, and usually innocuous, creatures these are.
![What can we find here? What can we find here?](https://angair.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/what-can-we-find-in-these-large-rocks.jpg)
What can we find here?
We firstly looked in the multiple crevices of the large rocks near the shore at the myriads of sea snails, limpets etc.
![Look what we found under this rock! Look what we found under this rock!](https://angair.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/look-what-we-found-under-this-rock.jpg)
Look what we found under this rock!
We then moved out onto the rock platform and carefully looked under rocks.
![Moving on Moving on](https://angair.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/moving-on.jpg)
Moving on
Andy explained the importance of putting creatures and rocks back as we found them, with the graphic analogy of us losing the roof of our house.
![Let's look near Eagle Rock Let's look near Eagle Rock](https://angair.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/lets-look-near-eagle-rock.jpg)
Let’s look near Eagle Rock
We saw a range of shells, sea stars, sea anemone crabs etc. One of the crabs had a soft back as he had just removed his shell and was in the process of hardening up a larger one, so we were especially careful in returning him to his habitat. A Decorator Crab was covered in seaweed and small objects from his rock pool, the camouflage being his only defence. Andy had an interesting story of an experiment done with a Decorator Crab put in an environment with scraps of blue tissue paper…and guess what happened!
A highlight was a close look at a large Elephant Snail, a really weird looking creature.
![Elephant Snail Elephant Snail](https://angair.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/elephant-snail.jpg)
Elephant Snail
![Wow! Wow!](https://angair.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/wow.jpg)
Wow!
Later in the walk Elicia Ivory from Parks Victoria joined us. She is on a short term position as a Marine Ranger, with her focus being community education/engagement over the summer period at Point Danger (Torquay), Point Addis Marine Park and Eagle Rock.
As darkness approached we had to finish…the time had flown!
![Nobody wanted the ramble to end Nobody wanted the ramble to end](https://angair.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/lighthouse-not-interested.jpg)
Nobody wanted the ramble to end
Ellinor Campbell