In recent years, citizen science has become a very important provider of biological data. This movement relies on the participation of people who have an interest in science but may not themselves be scientists. There is some training involved, as data must be collected in consistent ways if they are to be useful, but generally no…
Month: April 2016
The bloom is on
This week it has been very windy on the coast. As in hope-the-next-gust-doesn’t-arrive-while-I-am-still-holding-onto-the-door windy. Seriously, the other day I almost wrenched my shoulder when the wind caught a door I was walking through just as I opened it. I should have braced myself before opening that door. The wind also blows around dust and pollen, exacerbating everybody’s…
Seeing stars at Pigeon Point
This morning I drove up the coast to Pigeon Point. It was cold and very windy, and I was grateful to have decided to wear all of my layers. I don’t remember any cold mornings from last year’s low tides, which made me think that perhaps we’re returning to a more normal non-El Niño weather pattern. The…
A little less confounded now
So. Last week when I looked at my sand dollar larvae I wasn’t at all sure what to make of them. I thought that all of the offspring from one of the matings (F2xM1) were going south and didn’t know how much longer they would survive. The offspring from the other two matings seemed to be…
Surprise!
Yesterday I went over to the Seymour Center to talk to the person at the front desk about arranging a field trip visit for a class I’ll be co-teaching this summer. When I walked through the exhibit hall into the office wing there were a couple of staff members coming the other way down the hall,…
Confounded
Remember that one batch of sand dollar larvae that were looking weird on Monday? Well, they still look weird. In fact, all of the larvae looked the same yesterday as they did on Monday, which seems strange, considering how quickly they galloped through development for the first three weeks of larval life. It’s as though they’ve…
Dinner time!
The red-tailed hawk parents across the canyon are being kept busy by their hungry chicks. This year they have a trio of youngsters to feed–last year they successfully fledged two chicks–but apparently they’ve not had any trouble finding enough food for all three of them. If I had the luxury of staying home all day…
What are they up to?
These sand dollar (Dendraster excentricus) larvae that I’ve been raising will be 21 days old tomorrow, and they are still on the fast track. They’re developing much more quickly than any of the sea urchin cohorts I have raised. Some of them already have juvenile rudiments with tube feet visible. With the urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus)…
Sexy time for sea anemones
This morning I went out on the first morning low tide of the season. I was so excited to have the morning lows back that I got to the site early and had to wait for the sun to come up. Awesome thing #1 about early morning low tides: Having the intertidal to myself. The purpose for…
Wildflower excursion to southern California
Yesterday I joined some friends on an impromptu day trip to southern California to see the spring wildflower bloom. The El Niño rains had brought forth a “superbloom” this year, and while we didn’t have time to go all the way to Death Valley we thought we’d be able to see lots of flowers in…