When it comes to the natural world, I have always found myself drawn to things that are unfamiliar and strange. I think that’s why I gravitated towards the marine invertebrates: they are the animals most unlike us in just about every way imaginable. Even so, some of them have bodies at least that are recognizable…
Tag: marine biology
Ghosts
I seem to have a need to keep investigating seastar wasting syndrome (SSWS) and trying to make sense of what I and others see in the field. I think it parallels my morbid fascination with the medieval Black Death. In any case, I’ve devised a plan to continue experimenting with one aspect of the potential recovery…
They deserve a prettier name than “rockweed”
As spring arrives in full force, the algae are starting to come back in the intertidal. The past two mornings I went out on the low tides to look for something very specific (which I did find–more on that later) and noticed the resurrection of the more common red algae. So early in the season the…
Complexity in small packages
Last week I went up to Davenport to do some collecting in the intertidal. The tide was low enough to allow access to a particular area with two pools where I have had luck in the past finding hydroids and other cool stuff. These pools are great because they are shallow and surrounded by flat-ish rocks,…
Metamorphosis
It has been a few weeks since I posted about my most recent batches of urchin larvae. Some strange things have been happening, and I’m not yet sure what to make of them. It would be great if animals cooperated and did what I expect; somehow that never seems to be the case. The upshot…
Have a heart
Back in mid-December I collected a couple of small intertidal fishes and brought them back to the lab for observation and identification. Then the female laid a batch of eggs, which I’ve been watching ever since. Today the eggs are 15 days old. They are developing pretty quickly, I think, at ambient seawater temperatures of 12-13.5°C….
Eggs of a different sort
Back in mid-December I collected some urchins at Davenport Landing. Some of these urchins are the parents of the larvae that I’m culturing and observing now. Towards the end of the trip I flipped over some surfgrass (Phyllospadix torreyi) and saw two fish, obviously sculpins, huddled together; they had been hiding in the Phyllospadix and…
Beginnings and leavings
A few days ago I was in the intertidal with my friend Brenna. This most recent low tide series followed on the heels of some magnificently large swells and it was iffy whether or not we’d be able to get out to where we wanted to do some collecting. Our first day we went up…
Simply green
A few days ago I told my friend Brenna that I’d hunt around in the marine lab for a bit of a green alga that she wants to press. I had a pretty good idea of where to look, only the animals I’d seen it on had been removed from the exhibit hall. I asked…
Hope for the future
It has been almost three and a half years since I first documented seastar wasting syndrome (SSWS) in the lab. Since then many stars have died, in the field and in the lab, and more recently some species seem to be making a comeback in the intertidal. This circumstantial evidence may not be reason enough to conclude that…