On the Beach with Craig MacGowan

One of the highlights of Orca's Camp Indianola visits is always the beach walk with the legendary Craig MacGowan. Mr. MacGowan taught marine biology at Garfield for a thousand years -- there's always at least one parent in the group who had him as a teacher back in the day. Now that he's retired, he makes himself available to come teach kids about all the incredible animals that live on the beach. He usually brings a few Garfield students to help him out. He's charismatic, enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and totally focused on the kids. "Parents, keep it zipped!" he'll shout in his raspy, stentorian voice. "I want the kids to answer my questions, not you!"

When he arrived from the ferry, he strode up to the straggly crowd of kids and grown-ups wilting in the heat and divided us all into four groups. "Okay, you guys over here, your group is called the Saxidomuses! Can you say that? And you folks over there, you're the Hemigrapsuses!" Before long he had called out the Pisasters and the Iatias, and we had all followed him down to the beach to look for butter clams, purple shore crabs, biting worms, and all manner of marine invertebrates. The Garfield kids were great, but it was hard to compete with Mr. MacGowan: every time he shouted, "Hey kids! Come over here and look at this!" they'd all come running.


There were some good finds, for sure. But the best was Max's baby sea star. I don't know how on earth he spotted it among the rocks -- can you see it there on the tip of his finger?


After a while I took a break from the Iatias and sat on a log just watching the scene. Nashca came and sat next to me, announcing that the sea creatures were too scary, with too many legs and claws. So she spent some time capturing sand fleas and attempting to confine them in a clam shell, and then we wrote her name in the sand with sticks.