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:…
Tag: marine biology
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…
Questions and answers
I’ve been fielding questions about my recent sea star spawning work from people I’ve shared this blog with, which is a lot of fun! To streamline things and make the info available to anybody who might be following, I decided to put together a very brief FAQ-like post to address the most recent questions. Question: Can you…
From zero to cleavage in. . . nine hours
A recent college graduate and fellow marine lab denizen (Scott) and I are collaborating on a project to quantify growth rates in juvenile Pisaster orchraceus stars. This is one of the intertidal species whose populations in the field and in the lab were decimated by the most recent outbreak of sea star wasting syndrome (SSWS)….
Sea urchins have no manners
On Monday of this week (today is Thursday) I was transferring my baby urchins into clean bowls as I always do on Mondays, and for some crazy reason decided that I needed to measure all 300+ of them. I don’t remember how the details of how this decision came about, but it probably went something like…
When is a tube worm not a tube worm?
Answer: When it’s a snail! Yes, there are snails that secrete and live in white calcareous tubes that look very similar to those of serpulid polychaete worms. Here, see for yourself: The worms secrete calcareous tubes that snake over whatever surface they’re attached to. When the worm is relaxed, it extends its delicate pinnate feeding…
A naturalist goes in the field
This morning I took a small group of Seymour Center volunteers on a tidepooling trip to Point Piños (see red arrow in the photo below). Point Piños is a very interesting site. It marks the boundary between Monterey Bay to the right (east) of the point and the mighty Pacific Ocean to the left (west). As…
Timing is everything
This morning I went here (see arrow): See how it’s covered in water? I took this picture at about 13:00, probably right at high tide. And of course when I was out there this morning at 06:00, it was low tide. It wasn’t the greatest of low tides but it allowed me to see what…