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Contact: John Dell'Osso, 415-464-5135
Come to the Bear Valley Visitor Center on Saturday, June 16, 2007 at 12:30 PM to listen to author Mimi Koehl talk about her new book Wave-Swept Shore, The Rigors of Life on a Rocky Coast. Photographer Anne Wertheim Rosenfeld will also be on-hand with her spectacular images of the rocky intertidal shore and its inhabitants. This event is free and is sponsored by the Point Reyes National Seashore and the Point Reyes National Seashore Association. Take a close look at a wave-battered coast and you will discover a rich, fascinating, and remarkably brutal environment. Here, animals and plants exposed to wind, sun, and rain at low tide must cope with crashing waves as the seas rise to submerge them each day at high tide. How do living things survive in this harsh zone? With 87 stunning color photographs and an engaging text written for those with little or no knowledge of marine biology or physics, this book tells the story of one stretch along the Pacific coast of North America--introducing the mussels, limpets, crabs, grasses, starfish, kelp, and other animals and plants that live there, and explaining how they function and flourish in an environment of waves, sand, and rocks. In pictures and words, Wave-Swept Shore explains complex phenomena, such as wave action, using simple, intuitive analogies. It explores how the forms of animals and plants affect their survival in this harsh environment, considers their distribution on the shore, and looks at their seasonal variations, focusing on what can be easily observed by visitors to the coast. Revealing the rich variety of habitats woven into what may at first look like a fairly uniform environment, the book, an effective and beautiful tool for learning about the edge of oceans everywhere, opens our eyes to the wonders of rocky shores and introduces a whole new way of looking at the natural world. -NPS- |
Last updated: February 28, 2015