MarkH
Contributor
I had a bit of a shock at Ten Mile Point yesterday. Much of the rocks on the wall were covered with tiny white barnacles. Areas that used to be full of yellow sponge, purple tunicate colonies, orange cup corals, etc. are now colonized with barnacles instead. I hardly ever saw these barnacles anywhere in B.C. below the intertidal zone until the sea star die-off a couple of years ago. Now I'm seeing them blanketing the bottom at deeper depths at sites where I never saw them before. I think they used to be grazed away by sunflower stars, but since they're now all dead the barnacles are free to grow. This colonization at 10-Mile happened within the last 3 months. My last dive there was in April and things looked normal then.
