Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Sucia Island Marine State Park

Sucia Island sits on the northern edge of the San Juan Islands. Geologically, it's a very different place than the rest of of the islands. Most of the San Juans are a submerged mountain range - dense, black granite - lots of cliff faces, steep hills, and craggy bits. Sucia is ancient, uplifted seafloor and riverbed. Part of the island is comprised of 70 million year old rock, the rest is 50 million years old stone with modern soils developing on top. So bring on the photos!
Geology of the island - the yellow layer is the 70 million year old portion of the island.

This is the cove where we moored at Sucia. The dark spot there in the rocks is a cave. Two river otters were nesting in there from what we could tell. We had a great time watching them hunting and playing in the shallow water.

Copernicus at the mooring buoy in Fox Cove at Sucia.

This is a mushroom rock. Apparently, sandstones can weather on the top to something like concrete, then when the softer underlayers are exposed they weather faster, creating these features.

70 million year old mud. The entire shoreline was made up of this rock. Maybe we really were walking on dinosaurs.

The mudstone flats exposed by a minus tide.
Anemones exposed in tide pools in the rocks.

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