This past Monday I did something rare for me: I returned to the same intertidal site I had visited the previous day. I enjoyed myself so much the first time that I wasn’t able to refuse an invitation to go out there again. The site, Pigeon Point, is one of my favorites, especially in all of its spring…
Author: Allison J. Gong
Different strokes
When it comes to the natural world, I have always found myself drawn to things that are unfamiliar and strange. I think that’s why I gravitated towards the marine invertebrates: they are the animals most unlike us in just about every way imaginable. Even so, some of them have bodies at least that are recognizable…
Getting lucky
As with many things in life, catching a swarm of honey bees is all about opportunity and availability. In other words, luck. Bees swarm in the spring, as the nectar flow and lengthening days result in near-exponential population growth within a colony, and the bees run out of space in their hive. Capturing and rehiving a…
Ghosts
I seem to have a need to keep investigating seastar wasting syndrome (SSWS) and trying to make sense of what I and others see in the field. I think it parallels my morbid fascination with the medieval Black Death. In any case, I’ve devised a plan to continue experimenting with one aspect of the potential recovery…
They deserve a prettier name than “rockweed”
As spring arrives in full force, the algae are starting to come back in the intertidal. The past two mornings I went out on the low tides to look for something very specific (which I did find–more on that later) and noticed the resurrection of the more common red algae. So early in the season the…
The hunt concludes
Day 3 (Saturday 25 March 2017): Highway 25 We spent our second night on the coast in Morro Bay and came home via Highway 25. I would have enjoyed a drive up the coast, but given the road closures in Big Sur that wasn’t a possibility. Highway 25, however, proved to be a very pretty…
The hunt resumes
Day 2 (24 March 2017): Tehachapi, Antelope Valley, and Wind Wolves We spent the night in Bakersfield and the next morning (24 March 2017) headed up over Tehachapi Pass and headed into Antelope Valley. It had been many years since I’d driven over Tehachapi Pass, and I didn’t remember ever having seen Joshua trees before….
The hunt continues
Day 1 (Thursday 23 March 2017) cont’d.: Carrizo Plain National Monument The Carrizo Plain is an enclosed grassy plain in the southernmost “toe” of San Luis Obispo County, lying between the Temblor Range to the northeast and the Caliente Range to the southwest. Its average elevation is about 700 meters (2200 feet). The main geological features of…
The hunt begins
RAIN + SUN = WILDFLOWERS That’s one of the truisms of life in a Mediterranean climate such as ours. The official water year as measured by NOAA runs from 1 October through 30 September, and along the central/northern California coast most of the rain falls from December through March. The rest of the year, April through the summer and most…
Complexity in small packages
Last week I went up to Davenport to do some collecting in the intertidal. The tide was low enough to allow access to a particular area with two pools where I have had luck in the past finding hydroids and other cool stuff. These pools are great because they are shallow and surrounded by flat-ish rocks,…