At the marine lab we have many seawater tanks and tables in various shapes sizes. For my purposes the most useful are the tables. The tables are shallow, about 20 cm deep, but what’s nice about them is that water depth can be managed by varying the height of the stand pipe in the drain. I…
Tag: algae
The bloom is on
This week it has been very windy on the coast. As in hope-the-next-gust-doesn’t-arrive-while-I-am-still-holding-onto-the-door windy. Seriously, the other day I almost wrenched my shoulder when the wind caught a door I was walking through just as I opened it. I should have braced myself before opening that door. The wind also blows around dust and pollen, exacerbating everybody’s…
The answer to the puzzle
THE ANSWER TO YESTERDAY’S PUZZLE IS . . . . . . drum roll, please . . . Microcladia coulteri! I showed you this: but what you really needed to be certain of the ID was the rest of the photo: Huzzah again for natural history! I love it when natural history provides the answer to…
A tale of two algae, and a puzzle
If you visit the California rocky intertidal in the spring or summer, one of the first things you notice will be the macroalgae, or seaweeds. They are incredibly abundant and diverse this time of year, covering just about every bit of rock. In fact, in a landscape sense the only visible organisms are macroalgae and surfgrass:…
Branching out
Today I decided to look at some scuzz growing in one of the seawater tables at the marine lab. This table is populated mostly by coralline rocks, although I have some pet chitons running around in it. I picked out a promising rock and examined it under some decent light. Most of the rocks have…
Green is the new sexy, Part II
Part of what makes the marine algae so fascinating to me is their life cycles. I’m intrigued by organisms that do things differently from us. And to be honest, from the perspective of someone who studies invertebrates and their life cycles, we humans are rather boring: we’re born into in one body, reproduce (maybe), and then…
Green is the new sexy, Part I
I was making my last run through the wet lab today, about to head off to forage for lunch before a meeting elsewhere, when I saw this in one of my bowls: This is one of my feeding treatments for the juvenile urchins. The sheet of green stuff is Ulva sp., a green alga several species…