Tag: marine biology

A brief excursion between storms

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

After pretty much neglecting us in February, El Niño has returned with a bang in March. Late yesterday and last night a weather station near me, more or less at sea level, recorded 4.67 inches of rain and wind speeds of 15 mph. Stations in the Santa Cruz mountains recorded close to 6 inches of rain yesterday, and there were patchy power outages throughout the county. This morning I woke to sunny, clear skies. Beautifully clear, with white puffy clouds. The forecast calls for another storm to head in this evening, giving me a window of opportunity to run up the coast and grab some mussels.

I have to say, El Niño’s timing could be better. We have alternating weeks of spring and neap tides, and this winter the storms seem to be arriving during the spring tides. More than one tide series has been washed out because of storm surge and majorly big swell. I had figured that this would be the case today, so I didn’t expect to get very far down in the intertidal. However the only thing I absolutely had to collect was mussels and I don’t need a very low tide for those. It was very unlikely that I’d be unable to collect them, and at the very least I’d be able to take some photos.

Walking across the beach to the rocks, I noticed my first Velella of the season. As usual for these strangely wonderful animals they were gathered into windrows at the high tide level. Many of them were very small, less than 1 cm long, and the largest I saw was about the length of my thumb.

Velella velella stranded on the beach at Davenport Landing. 6 March 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Velella velella stranded on the beach at Davenport Landing.
6 March 2016
© Allison J. Gong

While it is not at all unusual to find Velella washed up on the beach, I did find some in a place that I didn’t expect. More on that in a bit.

Conditions in and on the water were pretty rough. There were no surfable waves, therefore no surfers. They’d have been beat up by the waves crashing in all directions.

Rough water at Davenport Landing Beach. 6 March 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Rough water at Davenport Landing Beach.
6 March 2016
© Allison J. Gong

On a calmer day, the water at this beach can be glassy smooth with very gently breaking waves. Not so today:

Easily accessible beaches such as this one are typically crowded for these afternoon low tides. Most of the people there are just hanging out with their friends, family, and dogs. Every once in a while, however, I run into people who might not be entirely on the up and up. Much of the coast in California is designated as a marine protected area (MPA), and while allowed activities vary from MPA to MPA, in general I don’t have permission to collect at any of them with my current state-issued scientific collecting permit. This means that collecting, both scientific and recreational, is concentrated into the few places where it is allowed.

Today I arrived at the parking area at the same time as a family of three adults and about five kids. The men were wearing wellies and carrying 5-gallon buckets. It was clear that they were going to be collecting something. I can’t really say that I looked any different, in my hip boots and with my own bucket, so I just smiled a greeting to them and headed out on my way. Given that there was so little exposed rock, we were bound to keep running onto each other. At one such meeting I asked what they were doing, and they said they were collecting mussels to eat. I said I was, too, to use as food for animals at the marine lab. They asked what the limit was. I told them that I didn’t know what the limit was for taking with a marine fishing license (assuming that they had one), but the limit for my collecting permit is 35. We nodded and went our separate ways.

Now, I’m not a game warden and it’s not my job to enforce the state’s rules about collecting, or even to see if other citizens have the appropriate permits or licenses. I generally feel that the better part of valor is to mind my own business. These guys today were friendly enough and completely non-threatening, but my gut instinct tells me that they didn’t have a fishing license. Is that any of my business? I don’t think so; yet as a citizen of this state I have a vested interest in protecting our wildlife from unlawful take. I know there aren’t enough wardens to patrol all beaches all the time, and now that I think about it I don’t know that I’ve ever been stopped by a warden on an afternoon low tide. The enforcement strategy seems to be to let citizens patrol each other, in the sense that skullduggery is less likely on a crowded beach in the broad daylight of afternoon than at the crack of dawn on a morning low tide.

Anyway, on to the matter at hand. I’ve noticed that recently my eye has been drawn to patterns that occur among whatever objects happen to be around. Scrambling down a little cliff and continuing up the coast I noticed these smears of algae growing on the vertical sandstone face. It’s not that I hadn’t seen them before, but because of the recent rain there was water running down the cliff face, which added a sheen to the green algae that they don’t have when they’re dry.

Streaks of green algae on sandstone cliff face at Davenport Landing. 6 March 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Streaks of green algae on sandstone cliff face at Davenport Landing.
6 March 2016
© Allison J. Gong

At this site there are some little caves that you can get to at low tide. The tide wasn’t low enough to reach the caves that go back any appreciable distance, but I did get to a small one. It was more of deep fissure than a cave, really, large enough to duck into but only a couple of meters deep. The really cool thing about it was the waterfall cascading over the opening. Again, without the runoff from yesterday’s rain this little waterfall wouldn’t even exist.

Also, there is quite a bit of stuff living inside the cavelet. Not much in the way of algae, of course, with the exception of both encrusting and upright corallines, but in terms of animals there was more or less the same fauna that I’d expect in the high-mid intertidal.

Cavelet at Davenport Landing Beach. 6 March 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Cavelet at Davenport Landing Beach.
6 March 2016
© Allison J. Gong

The biggest surprise in this little cave was Velella! A bunch of them had apparently gotten washed up into the fissure by the last high tide. I found them stuck amongst barnacles and algae.

Velella velella stuck to coralline alga inside cave at Davenport Landing. 6 March 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Velella velella stuck to coralline algae inside cave at Davenport Landing.
6 March 2016
© Allison J. Gong

This one was maybe half the length of my thumb. On the opposite side of the cave a crab was taking advantage of this unusual bounty.

Small shore crab (Pachygrapsus crassipes) dining on a mangled Velella velella in a cave at Davenport Landing Beach. 6 March 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Small shore crab (Pachygrapsus crassipes) snacking on a mangled Velella velella in a cave at Davenport Landing Beach.
6 March 2016
© Allison J. Gong

I can’t imagine there’s much nutrition in a Velella for a crab, but the animal is always right even (especially?) when it doesn’t make sense to us. The crab knows what it’s doing.

All told, it was a short but very satisfying little jaunt to the intertidal. The clouds had spent the afternoon talking about whether or not to build to anything, and by the time I left they’d come to consensus. The wind is picking up now, the rain should start soon, and the National Weather Service says we may be in for thunderstorms tonight. I’m tucked up at home, warm and dry. Have a good evening, everybody!

Davenport Beach

An afternoon not wasted

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

At this time of year low tides occur in the afternoon. Later in the spring they will shift to mornings. There are a few reasons that I really prefer morning low tides to those that occur in the afternoon: (1) the time of the low gets about 50 minutes later every day, so as the tide series progresses you start fighting loss of daylight; (2) the wind tends to pick up in the afternoon, making it colder and causing ripples on the surface of pools that make it difficult to see; (3) the intertidal is more crowded with human visitors on the afternoon lows. I had decided to use today’s low tide to photograph a particular clump of barnacles at Natural Bridges, and figured that it would be a quick trip because all the extraneous human activity would get on my nerves.

Turns out I found my barnacle clump pretty quickly, but it had been overgrown with tube worms (Phragmatopoma californica) and I wasn’t sure I could see the trait that I was looking for.

Gooseneck barnacles (Pollicipes polymerus) hanging down in a tube through the rock, surrounded by tubes of the polychaete worm Phragmatopoma californica. 21 February 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Gooseneck barnacles (Pollicipes polymerus) in a tube through the rock, surrounded by tubes of the polychaete worm Phragmatopoma californica.
21 February 2016
© Allison J. Gong

At least, I’m pretty sure I was in the right spot, looking at the same barnacles I’d seen in January. In any case, this year for whatever reason we have a bumper crop of Phragmatopoma. They are very abundant and appear to be expanding their range within the intertidal. Somebody should be keeping an eye on that. Ahem.

It was a beautiful afternoon, so when I had finished taking photos for “work” I sat around to bask in the sun and watch the surf.

21 February 2016 © Allison J. Gong
21 February 2016
© Allison J. Gong

As I sat quietly, the animals got used to my presence and went about their business as if I weren’t there. To me this is one of the best things about being in nature, the opportunity to disappear and watch animals do their thing without being noticed.

Western gull (Larus occidentals) at Natural Bridges. 21 February 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Western gull (Larus occidentalis) at Natural Bridges.
21 February 2016
© Allison J. Gong

After this bird cooperated so nicely, I challenged myself to catch as many different bird species in a single photograph. I got three in a single frame, twice:

Birds at Natural Bridges 21 February 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Western gulls, a snowy egret (Egretta thula), and a Brewer’s blackbird (Euphagus cyanocephalus) on the mussel bed at Natural Bridges.
21 February 2016
© Allison J. Gong
Western gull on the mussel bed, and a brown pelican (Occidentalis pelicanus) and cormorant in flight. 21 February 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Western gull on the mussel bed, and a brown pelican and cormorant in flight.
21 February 2016
© Allison J. Gong

Pelicans are so cool. Their populations were hit hard by DDT but have recovered beautifully in recent decades. To watch them skim the waves is one of life’s great pleasures. But my favorite photo of all the pelicans I shot today was this one of a pelican against the afternoon sky:

Brown pelican in flight. 21 February 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) in flight.
21 February 2016
© Allison J. Gong

The luck with birds didn’t stop when I left the beach, either. As I was walking back I came across a great blue heron (Ardea herodias) standing so still that at first I thought it was a statue even though I knew there wasn’t a statue in that spot.

Great blue heron (Ardea herodias) at the DeAnza Mobile Home Park in Santa Cruz. 21 February 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Great blue heron (Ardea herodias) at the DeAnza Mobile Home Park in Santa Cruz.
21 February 2016
© Allison J. Gong

When all was said and done, it ended up being a good afternoon. I got my attitude adjusted, saw some cool stuff, and left the intertidal feeling better than I did when I arrived. Thank you, Mother Nature, for the much-needed trip outside myself and opportunity to get my head straight.

Even teachers need teaching

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

One of the best things about teaching is the opportunity to keep learning. Case in point: yesterday I attended an all-day teacher training session for the LiMPETS program, so that I can have my Ecology students participate in a big citizen science project in the rocky intertidal later this spring. In the Monterey Bay region LiMPETS is organized and run out of the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, where yesterday’s training took place. LiMPETS has two ongoing citizen science projects, one looking at populations of mole crabs (Emerita analoga) on sandy beaches and the other monitoring population of several invertebrate and algal species on rocky shores. Of course, my interests being what they are I signed up for the rocky intertidal monitoring project.

We spent the morning learning about the history of the program and how to identify the organisms that are monitored, then after lunch went out to Point Pinos to collect some data and work through the process that we need to teach to our students. The day before we’d had a high surf advisory on the coast, and yesterday the swell was still big. We hiked out to the study site and set up the transect line, which runs from the top of a rock through the entire range of tidal heights to the low intertidal.

LiMPETS study site at Point Pinos. 6 February 2016 © Allison J. Gong
LiMPETS study site at Point Pinos.
6 February 2016
© Allison J. Gong
One of our instructors, the intrepid Emily, sets the transect line. 6 February 2016 © Allison J. Gong
One of our instructors, the intrepid Emily, sets the transect line.
6 February 2016
© Allison J. Gong

Where Emily is standing is about 10 meters along the transect line. The monitoring protocol calls for sampling at every meter on the transect. One of the other teachers, Phaedra, and I were the only ones wearing hip boots, so we volunteered to work at the lowest spot. We thought we’d start with the 10-meter quadrat and hopefully get down to the 11-meter quadrat once the tide receded a bit more. Then we got hit by a few big waves and decided that discretion is the better part of valor and gave up. It was a pretty easy decision to make, especially after the quadrat got washed away and we had to go fetch it when the waves brought it back.

Field gear. 6 February 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Field gear.
6 February 2016
© Allison J. Gong

All told the group collected eight quadrats of data. We had a little time to poke around (i.e., take pictures) before heading back to the museum for data entry.

A gorgeous chiton! 6 February 2016 © Allison J. Gong
A gorgeous chiton! I don’t know which species it is.
6 February 2016
© Allison J. Gong
Codium fragile, a filamentous green alga. 6 February 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Codium fragile, a filamentous green alga.
6 February 2016
© Allison J. Gong

Codium is an interesting alga. These cylindrical structures are composed of many filaments, which in turn contain multi-nucleate cells. Yes, the cells contain multiple nuclei. Codium fragile has the common name “dead man’s fingers,” I suppose because. . . well, I actually have no idea. As far as I can tell they don’t feel anything like a dead man’s fingers, or the way I imagine a dead man’s fingers would feel.

There were quite a few empty abalone shells scattered among the rocks. As we were hiking out I found this shell. When I tried to pick it up I found that it was still alive, and well stuck to the rock. This is a very good sign, as the black abs have been suffering from withering syndrome, in which the animal gradually loses its ability to hang on.

Haliotis cracherodii, the black abalone, wearing a few barnacle friends. 6 February 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Haliotis cracherodii, the black abalone, wearing a few barnacle friends.
6 February 2016
© Allison J. Gong

All in all, this workshop was a lot of fun. If I have to give up an entire Saturday to do training, it couldn’t get much better than spending at least part of it in the intertidal. And Point Pinos is such a fabulous intertidal site that I certainly wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to explore there again.

A tale of sand, a shell, and a seal

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

The new moon is tonight, which of course means that we are in spring tides. Yesterday afternoon my friend and colleague Scott joined me for my first visit to the intertidal in 2016. And where to go for this inaugural field excursion of the new year, but to Franklin Point? Low tide was at 15:53 yesterday, so we met up at 14:00, stopped to fill up the gas tank, and headed up the coast. Expecting it to be crazy windy as afternoons tend to be on the coast, I had dressed in extra layers. Scott and I were surprised to emerge from the car and find it wasn’t windy at all, so even though the air temperature was cool at least we didn’t have to deal with any significant amount of windchill factor.

Hiking over the dunes we saw Unusual Thing #1–a bridal photo shoot. A couple of stretches of the trail are covered by a boardwalk, and on the first of these we encountered a bride decked out in full regalia–wedding dress, flowers, hair, make-up–and two photographers. They were very nice and let us pass through in our decidedly inelegant boots and field gear. I didn’t think it would be very nice to take their picture. However, I did think that they’d lucked out and gotten a great day for photography: the aforementioned lack of wind meant that the bride wasn’t freezing in her slip of a wedding dress, and the afternoon light was flat so there were no shadows or harsh glare.

Descending onto the beach we came across Unusual Thing #2–an elephant seal.

Male elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris) hauled out on the beach at Franklin Point. 8 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Male northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris) hauled out on the beach at Franklin Point.
8 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

It is e-seal haul-out time at Año Nuevo State Park a few miles down the road from Franklin Point, and I’ve seen them on the beach a few times before. This was the first time I’d seen an adult male, though, and he was HUGE! Without being stupid and going over to stand next to this animal it’s hard to depict how large he is, and unfortunately there wasn’t anything in the vicinity to give a sense of scale. So trust me, or look it up for yourself, male elephant seals are ginormous. This big guy was taking a siesta, and we could hear him snoring. He did wake up and lift his head to look at us, but we gave him plenty of room as we walked past and he returned to his nap.

One of the reasons I wanted to see Franklin Point after the El Niño storms of the past week was to see how much sand had been washed away from the beach. Sand typically accumulates on California coastal beaches during the dry storm-less months of summer and autumn, only to be flushed away by storms the following winter. After a particularly violent storm or a series of storms occurring in a short time, very large amounts of sand can be removed from a beach. For the past four years we haven’t had much of a winter storm season (hence the awful drought) and the beach at Franklin Point has been tall and gently sloped. I’d grown accustomed to this state of affairs, which makes what we saw yesterday qualify as Unusual Thing #3–rocks that had been covered with sand for years and are now exposed.

To set the stage, here’s a picture that I took on an afternoon low tide last year on 17 March 2015:

Franklin Point beach on 17 March 2015. © Allison J. Gong
Franklin Point beach on 17 March 2015.
© Allison J. Gong

And here’s yesterday’s photo from the same general area:

Franklin Point beach on 8 January 2016. © Allison J. Gong
Franklin Point beach on 8 January 2016.
© Allison J. Gong

Can you see how much steeper the beach is in yesterday’s photo? And those rocks on the left side? They are not visible in the photo from last spring because they were under sand!

Here’s a closer look at the newly exposed rocks:

Newly exposed rocks at Franklin Point. 9 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Bare rocks at Franklin Point.
9 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

You can see exactly how high the sand was last summer. What’s really exciting is that these rocks represent pristine habitat that has yet to be exploited. I can look at primary ecological succession this spring! Well, at least until the sand returns and buries the rocks again.

As we meandered among the rocks in the intertidal, Scott and I both noticed an abundance of abalone shells. Fairly early on we spotted this black ab shell lying emersed above the water line:

Black abalone (Haliotis cracherodii) at Franklin Point. 8 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Black abalone (Haliotis cracherodii) at Franklin Point.
8 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

Turning the shell over we saw Unusual Thing #4–an abalone showing signs of withering syndrome:

Ventral view of a black abalone (Haliotis cracherodii) at Franklin Point. 8 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Ventral view of a black abalone (Haliotis cracherodii) at Franklin Point.
8 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

We were actually surprised to see that the animal was alive. Healthy living abalone are firmly attached to rocks, tucked into crevices. This one wasn’t attached to anything, just lying on the sand. We picked it up, turned it over, and found the body of the animal shriveled up and filling up only about half of the space it should have occupied. It didn’t respond to gentle pokes but wasn’t dead yet, or at least not dead enough to pass the stink test for deadness.

Withering syndrome is a bacterial disease that inhibits digestive function in abalone. To stave off starvation the infected animal begins to digest its own body tissues. As a result the entire body shrinks and eventually the foot can no longer stick to rocks. In California it affects black abs and red abs (H. rufescens). Until the recent years of warmer-than-usual water black abs (H. cracherodii) had been most common in southern California, but I’ve been seeing more of them in the past few years. Now it looks like the disease that plagues them has accompanied them up the coast. It’s not surprising, given the current El Niño conditions.

This gives me another thing to keep an eye out for in my intertidal excursions. I’ll start keeping track of abalone and see if withering syndrome becomes more prevalent. Might as well start with this afternoon’s low tide!

A reason to hope

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

About two and a half months ago, the ongoing disaster of sea star wasting syndrome raised its ugly head again when one of my bat stars (Patiria miniata) developed lesions on its aboral surface. Here’s what it looked like then:

Patiria miniata (bat star) with small lesion. 4 September 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Patiria miniata (bat star) with small lesion.
4 September 2015
© Allison J. Gong

and here’s a close-up of the lesion, taken the following day:

Lesion on aboral surface of Patiria miniata (bat star). 4 September 2015. © Allison J. Gong
Lesion on aboral surface of Patiria miniata (bat star).
5 September 2015.
© Allison J. Gong

See how the lesion is sort of fluffy? It looks as though tissue may be sloughing off the surface. Wanting to see how the syndrome would progress, I let it remain in its table and kept an eye on it. Every so often I took it out and examined it, and nothing really seemed to change. The animal continued to eat, retained its internal turgor pressure, and none of its table mates became sick. Eventually I sort of forgot about it.

Until two of my students last week asked if I had any pictures of sick sea stars that they could borrow for their end-of-the-semester project. This question jump-started my brain and I remembered this particular bat star, and told the students they could come to the lab and take their own pictures of it. . . that is, if it were still alive. They were able to visit me this past Monday and together we looked at the animal.

Lo and behold! it’s not dead, and actually looks pretty good.

Patricia miniata (bat star) with aboral lesion. 24 November 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Patiria miniata (bat star) with aboral lesion.
24 November 2015
© Allison J. Gong

The star has a few pale areas in addition to the original lesions, but overall doesn’t seem sick at all. It’s nice and firm, righted itself quickly when we placed it in the bowl with its oral surface up, and crawled around very actively.

Not only that, but take a closer look at the lesion itself:

Lesion on the aboral surface of Patiria miniata (bat star). 24 November 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Lesion on the aboral surface of Patiria miniata (bat star).
24 November 2015
© Allison J. Gong

The lesion appears to be somewhat sealed off, as if the epidermis has recovered. I gently poked the surface of the lesion with my forceps, and it feels a little firm and nothing squirted out of or peeled off the surface of it. I think it’s analogous to a scab that forms over a skinned knee. Of course, while a scrape on my knee would heal after a few days, sea stars have a much slower metabolism so I’m not really surprised that it would take over two months for this individual to show signs of a healing lesion.

Of course, I could be entirely wrong about what’s going on with this lesion. It’s the same size as it was back in September, so I’m not convinced that it’s healing. However, it seems that closure of the wound is better than a wide-open gaping sore that leaves the animal’s innards exposed to the external environment. If, over the next several weeks the edges of the wound begin to come together, then I’ll be more confident that this animal is on the road to recovery. In this season on Thanksgiving, this is something to be grateful for.

A visit to Doc’s lab

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

A few weeks ago I made a pilgrimage to the Great Tidepool in Pacific Grove, where Ed Ricketts did much of his collecting in the 1920-40s. Ricketts is a legend among students of the intertidal here in California, but he is known to a much wider audience as the inspiration for the character Doc in John Steinbeck’s novels Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday. Steinbeck and Ricketts were good friends, and in the spring of 1940 the two of them hired a seiner out of Monterey and her captain and crew for a six-week trip to collect intertidal invertebrates from the Sea of Cortez. The journal from that trip, published in 1951 as The Log from the Sea of Cortez, is a classic work of biology, philosophy, and adventure–one of my all-time favorite books and a definite recommended read.

Pacific Biological Lab, the home and workspace of Ed Ricketts. 14 November 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Pacific Biological Laboratories, the home and workspace of Ed Ricketts.
14 November 2015
© Allison J. Gong

For my birthday, I was treated to a tour of the Pacific Biological Laboratories on Cannery Row in Monterey. This is where Ricketts lived and worked. The original building on this site was completely destroyed in late 1936 by a fire that began at an adjacent cannery; Ricketts managed to escape with his typewriter but lost almost all of his collections, research notes, and scientific library. Fortunately for posterity, Ricketts’ book on intertidal ecology, Between Pacific Tides, had already been sent to the publisher. Ricketts rebuilt his home and lab, which is the building that currently occupies the site. The city of Monterey provides free docent-led tours of the Lab on the second Saturday of every month.

I was primarily interested in Ricketts the scientist, although Ricketts the music-lover, poet, and philosopher was also discussed in the tour. We did get to see the building and back yard, including what the docent referred to as the “holy of holies,” Doc’s lab itself.

Bottles and jars at the Pacific Biological Laboratories. 14 November 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Bottles and jars at the Pacific Biological Laboratories.
14 November 2015
© Allison J. Gong

I love this old stuff, even though I probably don’t want to know what was in any of these jars. Nor do I really want to be able to read the label on this bottle (okay, yeah, I really do):

Bottle with unreadable label. 14 November 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Bottle with unreadable label.
14 November 2015
© Allison J. Gong

I imagine that all the hazardous stuff was removed once the building became a museum, but the romantic in me wants to believe that these bottles still contain some essence of the work that went on in this room. Besides, I’ve encountered bottles that appear to be of not-much-younger vintage in old labs, and while they’re undoubtedly scary they are also fascinating.

Ricketts' card catalog, which held his extensive collection records. 14 November 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Ricketts’ card catalog, which held his extensive collection records.
14 November 2015
© Allison J. Gong

The most interesting artifact in the lab was this desk:

Steinbeck and Ricketts' desk. 14 November 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Steinbeck and Ricketts’ desk.
14 November 2015
© Allison J. Gong

This is the very desk that Steinbeck and Ricketts purchased to take on their voyage to the Sea of Cortez. Unfortunately, they hadn’t measured the berths on the boat they hired, and the desk didn’t fit anywhere. It spent the entire voyage lashed down and covered with a tarp.

Ricketts’ back yard holds a big rusted boiler that he used to render the livers of basking sharks (the smell must have been ungodly awful), as well as a series of concrete basins that he used as holding tanks for the animals he collected. The Pacific Ocean breaks literally against what would have been his garden wall if he’d had a garden.

Ricketts' back yard. 14 November 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Ricketts’ back yard.
14 November 2015
© Allison J. Gong

Visiting this place made me aware that I hold a teensy bit of Ricketts’ legacy in my hands whenever I teach about marine invertebrates or marine ecology. I certainly don’t have Ricketts’ poetic way of writing about these animals, but I hope that my students come away with a glimmer of what I love about them. And that I can be a conduit through which Ricketts’ holistic view of the world he observed is transferred to another generation of naturalists. It’s a big job, but somebody’s gotta do it.

Happiness is . . .

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

. . . taking a small group of highly motivated students into the field!

My invertebrate zoology class this semester has only 10 students, which allows me a lot more freedom to improvise on the fly and actually participate in the course instead of having to stand back and supervise 30 of them at the same time.

Most of my class getting started on their investigative journalist assignment at Point Pinos. 27 October 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Most of my class getting started on their investigative journalist assignment at Point Pinos.
27 October 2015
© Allison J. Gong

Their job was to interview at least six marine invertebrates and suss out answers to the Big 6 questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? In other words, to do a small bit of preliminary ecological investigation into animals they don’t already know much about. Some of the students also used the time to scope out the site for their independent research projects, which they will be starting soon.

. . . serendipity!

This past couple of classes I lectured on Platyhelminthes and Nemertea, and we saw both on the field trip.

The flatworm, Eurylepta californica, was spotted by a keen-eyed student, who thought at first it was a nudibranch but then noticed the ruffling edge and decided it must be something else.

Eurylepta californica, the "chocolate drizzle" polyclad flatworm, at Point Pinos. 27 October 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Eurylepta californica, the “chocolate drizzle” polyclad flatworm, at Point Pinos.
27 October 2015
© Allison J. Gong

This individual was a bit less than 2 cm long. I’ve only seen it at Point Pinos. Such a cool animal!

Some day I want to find one of these at a site where I can collect, and bring it back to the lab for closer observation.

On each of these class field trips to the intertidal there’s at least one conversation that goes something like this:

  • Student: Allison! I found this thing! What do you think it is?
  • Me, from several rocks over: Well, what does it look like?
  • Student gives a vague description, which usually isn’t very helpful.
  • Me: Is it alive?
  • Student: I think so.
  • Me: Color?
  • Student: Sort of orange. (or brown or purple or whatever)
  • Me: Shape? Size?
  • Student: This big (holds up fingers or hands to indicate size, then describes shape).
  • Me: Is it hard or squishy?
  • Student: I don’t want to touch it! Is it going to hurt me?
  • Me: Not unless it’s a big crab. Just touch it and tell me what it feels like!
  • <pause>
  • Student: Hey, it didn’t hurt me!

This conversation occurs as I make my way over to see what it is. Eventually I can take a look at the whatever-it-is and explain as best I can. The nemertean that we saw yesterday resulted in a conversation similar to this, but the student had pretty much decided on her own that she had found a nemertean. By the time I made it over to where she was pointing the worm had just about disappeared into a mussel bed, which is where they hang out. I could see enough to determine that it was Paranemertes peregrina.

Paranemertes peregrina, a nemertean worm, at Pistachio Beach. 31 January 2015 © Allisoin J. Gong
Paranemertes peregrina, a nemertean worm, at Pistachio Beach.
31 January 2015
© Allison J. Gong

Nemerteans are unsegmented, slimy, predatory worms that feed by shooting out a sticky proboscis and wrapping it around prey. Some have a stylet at the end of the proboscis with which they can repeatedly stab the prey and inject toxins. They may not be much to look at, but watching them in action should make you glad that you’re not a small animal.

. . . being in the right place at the right time!

Yesterday we saw octopuses! Three of them, I think. And one of the most glorious sea anemones I have ever seen.

Octopus rubescens crawling around at Point Pinos. 27 October 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Octopus rubescens crawling around at Point Pinos.
27 October 2015
© Allison J. Gong
A beautiful Anthopleura xanthogrammica anemone at Point Pinos. 27 October 2015 © Allison J. Gong
A beautiful Anthopleura xanthogrammica anemone at Point Pinos.
27 October 2015
© Allison J. Gong

The octopuses that were out of the water were duly rescued by my students. The red one that I photographed turned out to about the length of my hand when it swam away into the depths of a tidepool. Watching the students release this little animal back into the water was a fitting way to close out what had been a fantastic field trip.

A pilgrimage, of sorts

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

If I were the type of person to make and keep a bucket list, today I would have been able to cross off one item. For some reason until today I’d never managed to get to Ed Ricketts’ Great Tidepool, even though I’d been several times to Point Pinos which is right around the corner. Today I had intended to do some collecting for a colleague back east, but it was just as well that those plans changed as I didn’t find what I was supposed to collect. However, since I had blocked out the time I thought I might as well take advantage of the opportunity to scope out a new site.

Now that we’re back in afternoon low tides, fighting darkness becomes a real problem. Today’s low tide was at 16:28 and I had plenty of time to poke around and explore. Tomorrow I’m taking my class to the intertidal for an afternoon field trip, and on Wednesday I’ll do some collecting of my own, almost literally racing against nightfall. Still, it was wonderful just to be out there again.

Sign

I’d heard about all the sea hares in the intertidal, and they were out in full force this afternoon. There were dozens of them, hanging out in ones and twos, either emersed or submerged just below the water line. They are big animals, about the size of a football, and silky soft to the touch.

California sea hare (Aplysia californica) in the Great Tidepool in Pacific Grove. 26 October 2015 © Allison J. Gong
California sea hare (Aplysia californica) in the Great Tidepool in Pacific Grove.
26 October 2015
© Allison J. Gong

The sea hares are herbivores, and they continued to munch on red algae even when completely emersed. At one point I accidentally either stepped on or kicked one, because suddenly the water around my feet started turning purple. I looked around for the culprit and found a large sea hare (almost half a meter long) heading towards the depth of a pool, oozing huge amounts of purple ink. And by “oozing” I really mean spewing. It looked like a volcano shooting lava into the water:

Color me impressed! Here’s the animal that made all the ink:

California sea hare (Aplysia californica) exuding ink. 26 October 2015 © Allison J. Gong
California sea hare (Aplysia californica) exuding ink.
26 October 2015
© Allison J. Gong

It was a good day for molluscs. I saw a couple of these little chitons, Chaetopleura gemma. They are only about 1.5 cm long, and the ones I’ve seen in the field are orange, often with one of the valves an entirely different color.

Chaetopleura gemma, a small chiton. 26 October 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Chaetopleura gemma, a small chiton.
26 October 2015
© Allison J. Gong

And there were some other chitons, too. This is a beautiful specimen of Katharina tunicata:

The black katy chiton (Katharina tunicata). 26 October 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Black katy chiton (Katharina tunicata).
26 October 2015
© Allison J. Gong

In this species the girdle, the tough lateral edges of the mantle extend dorsally to nearly cover the eight plates on the back. They are one of the easiest chitons to identify in the field because of this feature.

And on my way out I saw a large (~7 cm) mossy chiton, Mopalia muscosa. These chitons can be fairly abundant at the sites I visit; every time I see one it’s like meeting up with an old friend.

Mossy chiton (Mopalia muscosa). 26 October 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Mossy chiton (Mopalia muscosa).
26 October 2015
© Allison J. Gong

I find chitons very interesting, maybe because they can be quite abundant and yet are often overlooked. Many of them look not too different from the rocks they live on, and they don’t exactly lead the most active lives when we see them. However, if we were to spy on them at high tide, I bet we’d see a lot more action from chitons. And maybe it’s the very stillness of chitons that make them so easily foulable by other organisms. The Mopalia in the photo is host to a lot of spirorbids (tiny polychaete worms that live in spiral calcareous tubes) and various algae.

The Great Tidepool holds a special place in the hearts of marine biologists in the Monterey Bay region because it is where Ed Ricketts did much of his collecting and formulating the ideas that would become the field of marine ecology. He was a gifted writer and I find that his books convey not just his understanding of the rocky intertidal, but an affection for the animals that live there. Scientists are often assumed to be rather cold, dispassionate people; Ed Ricketts proved otherwise. If you’ve never read any of Ricketts’ writings, I recommend Between Pacific Tides, as well as the memoir that he wrote with his friend John Steinbeck, Log from the Sea of Cortez.

I want to be Ed Ricketts when I grow up.

Thar she blows!

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

Let’s just get this out of the way: I live in a paradise of natural beauty. Sometimes I still can’t believe that I get to call this gorgeous place my home. However did I get so lucky?

Case in point. For the last week or so a juvenile humpback whale has been hanging out in a small cove right off the road that winds along the coast in Santa Cruz. Several of my friends had shown me pictures and video of it, but every time I went out I got skunked. I saw lots of seabirds, though, and that itself was pretty amazing.

Mitchell's Cove in Santa Cruz, CA. 16 September 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Mitchell’s Cove in Santa Cruz, CA.
16 September 2015
© Allison J. Gong

Pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis) and Caspian terns (Hydroprogne caspia) plunge-diving? Check. Common murres (Uria aalge) in the air and hanging out on the surface of the water? Check. Attempted kleptoparasitism by a gull on a tern that had caught a fish? Check. That was really cool. Oddly, though, I didn’t see any sooty shearwaters today.

This past Saturday I went down to Mitchell’s Cove and saw some amazing seabird behavior. The pelicans and terns were both plunge-diving, and then being mobbed by gulls and other hangers-on every time they came up with a fish. And in the background there was an unending stream of shearwaters flying from right to left.

I love how the pelicans fly along above the surface, then fold their wings and transform into arrows before shooting into the water. Good thing they don’t have nostrils, isn’t it? The terns do the same thing. Through the binoculars I watched the terns looking down for prey before committing to a dive; from what I could see they almost always came up with a fish.

The aforementioned humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) was putting on a show this morning for the local humans. I wandered down at about 08:45 on my way to the marine lab. There were about 40 people scattered on the beach and along the side of the road. I settled myself on a rock with my camera and binoculars at hand. It took only a couple of minutes to see this:

Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) lunge-feeding at Mitchell's Cove in Santa Cruz, CA. 16 September 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) lunge-feeding at Mitchell’s Cove in Santa Cruz, CA.
16 September 2015
© Allison J. Gong

Judging by size, this whale appears to be a juvenile. It was swimming just beyond the surf break, where the water was shallow enough that I could see the ripples just beneath the surface as the whale swam by. In this 2-minute video, the whale surfaces to breathe a few times and takes two lunging mouthfuls of fish and water before turning away and heading to slightly deeper water.

If I didn’t have an actual job to do, I could have stayed out there longer, just to keep observing all the action. As it was, my arrival at the marine lab was delayed by about 40 minutes. Oh well. But I didn’t have any time-crucial tasks or meetings this morning so nobody’s schedule was affected except my own, and if I can’t take advantage of serendipitous sightings like this then what’s the point of living in paradise?

Spying on filter-feeders

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

Late yesterday afternoon I met my friend Brenna at the harbor to go on a slug hunt. Brenna is working on the taxonomy of a group of nudibranchs for her dissertation, and we’ve gone collecting out in the intertidal together a few times. I knew I’d need some harbor therapy after teaching a microscope class in the afternoon so when she suggested a slug hunt I didn’t have to think twice about saying “Yes!”

I arrived at the harbor before Brenna did, and spent some time lying on the docks taking pictures of the fouling community that lives there. The late summer afternoon light was perfect for picture taking, and I got some great shots.

Mussel (Mytilus sp.) at the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor, 29 August 2015. © Allison J. Gong
Mussel (Mytilus sp.) at the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor, 29 August 2015.
© Allison J. Gong

This is one of my favorites. It’s a view into the posterior end of a live mussel (Mytilus sp.). Mussels live inside a pair of shells and open up only the posterior end to suck in water for respiration and filter feeding. They shut the shells very quickly when disturbed, so I had to sneak up on this individual and take a picture before it knew I was there. Looking through the opening you can see a blurry pale structure running from left to right; I think this is the mussel’s gill. The elaborately fringed dark structure that looks like a pair of curtains extending towards each other is the edge of the mantle. Because most of the mussel’s body is enclosed within the shells, the mantle edge contains most of the animal’s sensory organs. Mantles are exquisitely sensitive to touch, light, and certain chemicals; scallops, another type of bivalve mollusk, often have actual eyes on the mantle edge.

In addition to spying on mussels, I also tried to catch polychaete worms off-guard. There are several different types of tube-dwelling polychaetes living at the harbor. Most of the ones I saw yesterday were serpulids living in meandering calcareous tubes. Like these:

Serpulid polychaete worm at the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor, 29 August 2015. © Allison J. Gong
Two examples of Serpula columbiana, a tube-dwelling polychaete worm, at the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor, 29 August 2015.
© Allison J. Gong

Polychaete worm tubes come in many different materials and morphologies. These serpulids live in calcareous tubes that snake over surfaces. Because the tubes are mineralized, they can extend upwards from a surface, too. The worm spends its entire post-larval life in the tube that it secretes, extending only its “head”, visible as a tentacular crown, for filter-feeding. Like the mussels, serpulid polychaetes are very quick to respond to anything they perceive as a threat. Even a mere shadow passing over them can cause a rapid retreat into the tube finalized by sealing off the tube with the trumpet-shaped operculum.

One of the most conspicuous animals at the harbor is an invasive encrusting bryozoan, Watersipora subtorquata. This animal is one of the first to colonize new real estate. Nothing else looks like it, so it is easy to identify.

Watersipora subtorquata, an introduced bryozoan at the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor, 29 August 2015. © Allison J. Gong
Watersipora subtorquata, an introduced bryozoan at the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor, 29 August 2015.
© Allison J. Gong

Watersipora grows as a crust on surfaces such as mussel shells and floating docks, but when two colonies meet they use each other as surfaces, forming these curling sheets. The faint fuzziness that you see sort of hovering above the surface of the sheets is due to the lophophores extending from the zooids. Here’s a closer shot:

Watersipora subtorquata, an introduced bryozoan at the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor, 29 August 2015. © Allison J. Gong
Watersipora subtorquata, an introduced bryozoan at the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor, 29 August 2015.
© Allison J. Gong

Another of the common introduced species at the harbor is the colonial sea squirt Botrylloides violaceus. This animal comes in a wide range of oranges and even purple. Here’s a colony that seems to understand the visual impact of pairing high-contrast colors:

Colony of the colonial sea squirt Botrylloides violaceus growing over mussel shells at the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor, 29 August 2015. © Allison J. Gong
Colony of the colonial sea squirt Botrylloides violaceus growing over mussel shells at the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor, 29 August 2015.
© Allison J. Gong

What looks like a mass of pale orange doughnuts is actually a strictly organized colony. Each of the doughnuts is a zooid, and the hole of the doughnut is the incurrent siphon through which the zooid draws water in. Each zooid has its own incurrent siphon. In this photo you can see several larger holes; these are excurrent siphons, shared by several zooids, through which waste water is expelled. It’s difficult to see in the photo, but the excurrent siphons are raised up above the level of the colony, so water that has already been filtered doesn’t get sucked in again. This is exactly the reason that human structures such as smokestacks and chimneys are tall.

Oh, and since you asked, Brenna did indeed find slugs! And she taught me some field characteristics to help me ID slugs that I find. We both got what we needed on our little jaunt to the harbor.