This afternoon I was enjoying the sunshine and watching the small finchy birds flitting about in the big coffeeberry bush off our back deck. I call this bush the “conference bush” because every spring the birds congregate in it and chatter to each other like conventioneers. When the bush blooms it becomes populated with foraging…
Off to the races!
Yesterday I drove up the coast to Pigeon Point to do a little poking around. I had originally planned to search for little stars, survivors that had made it through the most recent outbreak of wasting syndrome. But I got distracted by other things and gave up on the stars, for now. I need to…
Larvae as . . . particles?
On another glorious afternoon low tide the other day, with the help of a former student I collected six purple urchins, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. Given that we’re in about the middle of this species’ spawning season, I reasoned that collecting six gave me a decent chance of ending up with at least one male and one…
A whole lotta pink
The temperate rocky intertidal is about as colorful a natural place as I’ve seen. Much of the color comes from algae, and in the spring and early summer the eye can be overwhelmed by the emerald greenness of the overall landscape due to Phyllospadix (surf grass, a true flowering plant) and Ulva (sea lettuce, an alga)….
Sex on the Beach
Every winter northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) return to their breeding rookeries in central and northern California. These animals spend the majority of their time foraging at sea, but as with all pinnipeds they must return to land to birth their pups. The breeding site in central California is Piedras Blancas, a few miles north…
Finally! A cause for sea star wasting syndrome
At last, a publication on the causative agent for sea star wasting syndrome! Several co-authors have written a paper that was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), in which the culprit was identified as a densovirus. The Smithsonian wrote up a nice article summarizing the findings here. While it remains…
Cups vs. gourds
A couple of months ago I posted about the vernal equinox and the arrival of spring as heralded by the return of the swallows to the marine lab. This spring I’ve been keeping an eye on the mud nests that have been going up under the eaves of one of the buildings. It seemed to…
Monsters in the making
Yesterday I collected three very small Pycnopodia helianthoides stars. When I brought them back to the marine lab I decided to photograph them because with stars this small I could easily distinguish between the original five arms and the new ones: These guys began their post-larval life with the typical five arms you’d expect from…
Fouling communities
On 11 March 2011 a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurred off the coast of Japan. About 14 hours later, at 11:15 a.m. local time a tsunami came through the Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor. It sank dozens of boats and significantly damaged several of the docks. People were ordered to evacuate the area before the expected…
Going, going, gone!
Our Purple beehive, which swarmed on Wednesday (today is Friday), threw another swarm this afternoon. It remains to be seen if we can recapture them. So far we haven’t been able to see exactly where they’ve settled. Fingers crossed.