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,…
Just a human, being
Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about our species’ relationship to the natural world. These musings have been brought on not only by my own impairment and inability to spend as much time in the field as I would like, but also by the current political climate in the U.S. Recent Executive Branch appointments and…
A different sort of hatching
My bald sculpins have begun hatching! Their egg mass has been disintegrating over the past few days and I couldn’t tell if that was because they were dying or hatching. Yesterday I was able to spend some time looking at them and was surprised to see that a few little pink blobs had wiggled their way…
Metamorphosis
It has been a few weeks since I posted about my most recent batches of urchin larvae. Some strange things have been happening, and I’m not yet sure what to make of them. It would be great if animals cooperated and did what I expect; somehow that never seems to be the case. The upshot…
A few days make all the difference
Almost a week ago, my sculpin eggs were doing great. The embryos had eyes and beating hearts and were actively squirming around inside their eggs. A few of them had died but overall they seemed to be developing well. I had high hopes that they would continue to do so, and began to think of what…
Have a heart
Back in mid-December I collected a couple of small intertidal fishes and brought them back to the lab for observation and identification. Then the female laid a batch of eggs, which I’ve been watching ever since. Today the eggs are 15 days old. They are developing pretty quickly, I think, at ambient seawater temperatures of 12-13.5°C….
Eggs of a different sort
Back in mid-December I collected some urchins at Davenport Landing. Some of these urchins are the parents of the larvae that I’m culturing and observing now. Towards the end of the trip I flipped over some surfgrass (Phyllospadix torreyi) and saw two fish, obviously sculpins, huddled together; they had been hiding in the Phyllospadix and…
Beginnings and leavings
A few days ago I was in the intertidal with my friend Brenna. This most recent low tide series followed on the heels of some magnificently large swells and it was iffy whether or not we’d be able to get out to where we wanted to do some collecting. Our first day we went up…
Simply green
A few days ago I told my friend Brenna that I’d hunt around in the marine lab for a bit of a green alga that she wants to press. I had a pretty good idea of where to look, only the animals I’d seen it on had been removed from the exhibit hall. I asked…
Hope for the future
It has been almost three and a half years since I first documented seastar wasting syndrome (SSWS) in the lab. Since then many stars have died, in the field and in the lab, and more recently some species seem to be making a comeback in the intertidal. This circumstantial evidence may not be reason enough to conclude that…