This past weekend I attended a family reunion at South Lake Tahoe. It had been several years since the previous reunion for this side of the family, and it was wonderful seeing almost all of my cousins and their various offspring, plus aunts and uncles, in a glorious setting. All good things must come to…
You are what you eat, part the second
Two months ago now I gave my juvenile sea urchins a job. It’s the kind of job they’re perfectly suited for: eating algae. I measured them all and randomly divvied them up into three food treatments. One group remains on the pink coralline alga they’d all been eating once they graduated from a diet of scum,…
Pop quiz!
Okay, what are these? Extra-credit: Who made them? If you’ve been reading my blog posts for the past few months, you’ve seen everything you need to answer both questions. Respond in the Comments section, please!
More unusual sightings, and some underwater experiments
In defiance of post-nasal drip and an ominous tickle at the back of my throat, I got up early again this morning and went out on the low tide. I skipped yesterday’s low tide in favor of getting a little more sleep, thinking that it would help me fight off this incipient summer cold, but…
Farewell, Franklin Point!
Today I made what is likely my last trip to Franklin Point for several months. Tonight’s blue moon brings us the last of the good low tide series until the end of October. For me, a “good” tide series is one in which the low lows occur during daylight hours and are below the zero mean…
Nature’s air conditioning
While much of California’s interior swelters under abominable heat this week, here on the coast we are blessed by the presence of the marine layer, which often brings cooling fog. It was drizzling when I got up this morning, and although the sun did make brief appearances the air remained refreshingly cool. And right now, on…
Life in the sea
This morning I collected another plankton sample from the end of the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf, equipped this time with a 53-µm net used to collect phytoplankton. Phytos, as we refer to them, are the (mostly) unicellular photosynthetic organisms that make up the bottom of the pelagic trophic web. In a nutshell, they are the…
A star is born!
I’m sorry. I had to go there. You didn’t really expect me not to, did you? The reason, of course, is that today we got our first settled and metamorphosed Pisaster stars! We were doing our normal Monday water change when I noticed a teensy orange speck on the bottom of one of the jars….
I go on a treasure hunt
California is being slammed by a very intense El Niño event, and the effects are being felt up and down the coast. Seawater temperatures here in Santa Cruz have been in the 15-16°C since late May, and in the past week have shot up to 18.5°C. While Californians have their fingers crossed that El Niño will bring drought-relieving…
The perfect storm
Although the last thing that any of us marine invertebrate biologists want to see again is a wasted sea star, the syndrome has once again been making its presence felt at the marine lab. It has been almost two years since I documented the initial outbreak, and while nobody is convinced that it has entirely…