Some organisms, like some people, have a charisma that just can’t be explained. For me, the sea palm (Postelsia palmiformis) has always been one such organism. Maybe part of its charm is the fact that it’s not very common; it lives on rocky outcrops on exposed outer coasts, which aren’t the easiest places to get…
General natural history
To the stars and back again
Dedication: For Krinkle, because I think he’d appreciate the juxtaposition This is one of my favorite quotations from literature: And it is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious, most of the mystical outcrying which is one of the most prized and used and desired reactions of our species, is really…
A final prickly surprise
On our last afternoon at the Schoodic Institute we were dealing with laundry for our upcoming several days touring in New England. On the way back from the laundry room we came across this little creature waddling towards us. It was a porcupine! It kept coming towards us, even as we were backing away. Clearly…
Earthwatch 2: Project ASCO
One of the reasons I selected this particular Earthwatch expedition was that it involved studies of both forest and ocean, which are my two favorite ecosystems here at home. I wanted to compare what I’m familiar with to similar habitats on the opposite coast. Regarding the rocky intertidal, I had been warned not to expect…
Earthwatch 1: Counting crowberry
This summer we finally got to take a trip that had originally been scheduled for 2020. It was an Earthwatch expedition to Acadia National Park in Maine. It was also the first time I’d traveled outside the Pacific time zone, flown, and taken public transit since the COVID-19 pandemic began. All of those were stressful….
A most unusual sort of snail
One of the many delightful animals in the rocky intertidal is the vermetid snail, Thylacodes squamigerus. Unlike their more typical gastropod relations, the vermetids don’t live in a shell, per se. Instead, they live in a calcareous tube, which forms a loose coil draped over the surface of a rock. The tubes can be up…
Natural Bridges
Last week we had some of the best low tides of the season, and I was grateful to spend three consecutive mornings in the intertidal. The picture-taking conditions were fantastic when I went to Natural Bridges, and I snapped away like a madwoman. Unfortunately, last week was also finals week, and it wasn’t until I…
Trip report: Big Creek Natural Reserve
For the final field trip of the quarter for Introduction to Field Research and Conservation, I took the class to the Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve. Located in the Santa Lucia Mountains south of Big Sur, Big Creek was the fourth of the UCSC Natural Reserves we visited this quarter. The site is rugged and spectacular,…
When things are just a little too swell
One of the things that I’ve been doing with my Ecology class since almost the very beginning is LiMPETS monitoring in the rocky intertidal. Usually we have a classroom training session before meeting in the field to do the actual work. This year we are teaching the class in a hybrid mode, with lecture material…
Springtime in the sea and in the air
This week was my spring break, and although I have more than enough work to catch up on, I decided that each day I would spend a few hours doing something fun before or after getting stuck in with adult responsibilities. I didn’t set up formal plans, but knew I wanted to collect a plankton…