Five days ago I collected the phoronid worms that I wrote about earlier this week, and today I’m really glad I did. I noticed when I first looked at them under the scope that several of them were brooding eggs among the tentacles of the lophophore. My attempts to photograph this phenomenon were not entirely…
Marine biology
A different take on ‘vermiform’
If I asked you to draw a worm and designate the front and back ends, you’d most likely come up with something that looks like this: And you would be entirely correct. A worm, or any creature described as ‘vermiform’ for that matter, has an elongated, wormlike body. Some worms have actual heads with eyes…
Lunacies
For several centuries now, Earth’s only natural satellite has been associated with odd or unusual behavior. Lunatics were people we would describe today as mentally ill, who behaved in ways that couldn’t be predicted and might be dangerous. The erratic behaviors were attributed to the vague condition of lunacy. These words are derived from the…
A good deed
This is the time of year when whales visit Monterey Bay and often come quite close to shore. Humpbacks, in particular, are commonly seen from beaches in the fall. Earlier in the summer they are out over the Monterey Canyon feeding on krill. In the late summer and early fall they switch to feeding on…
Blitzin’ the intertidal, part 2
The intertidal portion of my participation in Snapshot Cal Coast 2017 is complete. I organized four Bioblitzes, two of which consisted of myself and Brenna and the other two for docents of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center (Tuesday) and the docents of Año Nuevo and Pigeon Point State Parks (Wednesday). The four consecutive days of…
Blitzin’ the intertidal, part 1
This is the second year that the California Academy of Sciences has sponsored Snapshot Cal Coast, a major effort to document and characterize the biodiversity of the California coast. To this end the Academy has organized several Bioblitzes at various sites in northern California, and solicited volunteers to lead their own Blitzes, either as individuals…
A return to normal conditions . . . maybe
If anyone remembers, 2015 was a year of strange weather. The Blob of warm water in the northeast Pacific governed weather patterns throughout California, and we had an unusually warm and sunny summer, with none of the normal fog on the coast. Nature’s air conditioner went on the fritz that year. Since I spent most…
Sexy times in the tidepools
It seems that most years, the Memorial Day weekend brings some of the lowest spring tides of the year, and 2017 certainly fits the bill. I’ve been out for the past two days, heading out just as the sun is starting to rise, and already I’ve seen enough to whet my appetite for more. And with…
Peanut worms!
If I ask my invertebrate zoology students to name three characteristics of the Phylum Annelida, they would dutifully include segmentation and chaetae (bristles) in the list. And they would be correct. Annelids, for the most part, are segmented and many of them have chaetae. But in biology there are many exceptions for every rule we teach,…
Eight is enough
One of the defining characteristics of the Phylum Mollusca is the possession of a shell, which serves both as a protective covering and an exoskeleton. We’ve all seen snails, and some people may have noticed that snails often withdraw entirely into their shells and even have a little door that they can use to seal up the…