In terms of weather, this has been the first real week of winter we’ve had so far this season. But finally we’re getting some action from an atmospheric river, and it is bringing both much-needed rain and the threat of mudslides in mountain regions that were badly burnt just a few months ago. During an…
Author: Allison J. Gong
Starting at the beginning, again
According to my notes at the lab, the last time I spawned urchins was December of 2016, making it four years ago. It has always been something I enjoyed doing, but I didn’t have a reason to until now. When the coronavirus pandemic began almost a year ago now, access to all facilities at the…
Through young eyes
On the penultimate day of 2020 I met up with my goddaughter, Katherine, and her family up at Pigeon Point to have two adventures. The first one was to find a marble that had been hidden a part of a game. We got skunked on that one, although the marble was found after we left…
And. . . action!
At the end of August I got to play animal wrangler for a film production. Back in the late winter I had been contacted by an intern at KQED in San Francisco, who wanted to shoot some time-lapse footage of anemones dividing. We went out and collected anemones, I got them set up in tanks…
Life (and death) at the shore
Still more or less under quarantine shutdown due to COVID19, I haven’t been doing much outdoor stuff over the past several months. What with the pandemic and horrid air quality due to wildfires throughout the state, spending time in places I would normally like to hang out simply hasn’t been possible. We’re still getting too…
Upcoming talk
In this strange pandemic school year with classes online and student clubs not able to meet in person, the Natural History Club has been meeting virtually twice a week. We can’t go out as a group on any field trips, so the students have been sharing their nature journals online. Yesterday we played Jeopardy! I…
False nightfall
California has been burning for almost a month now. Wildfires rage up and down the state, and it seems that new ones pop up every day. I haven’t bothered looking up the latest stats on acreage destroyed because, frankly, it would be too depressing. All across social media today people posted photos of orange skies…
Destruction and resilience
22 August 2020 As I write these words, a massive and powerful wildfire is raging through the Santa Cruz Mountains, approaching the city of Santa Cruz from the north and west. This morning’s stats: Much of the terrain burning is redwood forest. Big Basin Redwood State Park has burnt extensively. All park buildings and campgrounds…
In Memoriam
On the afternoon of July 31, 2020 the world of invertebrate biology and marine ecology in California lost a giant in our field. Professor Emeritus John S. Pearse died after battling cancer and the aftereffects of a stroke. John was one of the very first people I met when I came to UC Santa Cruz….
Emergence
Every summer, like clockwork, my big female whelk lays eggs. She is one of a pair of Kellett’s whelks (Kellettia kellettii) that I inherited from a labmate many years ago now. True whelks of the family Buccinidae are predatory or scavenging snails, and can get pretty big. The female, the larger of the two I…