In the spirit of June as Pride month, I thought it would be fun to showcase the colors of the intertidal. All of these are photos that I’ve taken at various sites since January 2019. Here goes! Red, including pink Orange Yellow, including gold and ochre Green Blue Purple And there you have it! Happy…
Tag: marine invertebrates
Counting critters
Professor Emeritus John Pearse has been monitoring intertidal areas in the Monterey Bay region since the early 1970s. Here on the north end of Monterey Bay, he set up two research sites: Opal Cliffs in 1972 and Soquel Point in 1970. These sites are separated by about 975 meters (3200 feet) as the gull flies….
Castles in the sand
If, like me, you are fortunate enough to live near the coast in Northern California, you get to visit the tidepools. And when you do, you may notice something that looks like a pile of sand in the mid tidal zone below the mussel beds. When you venture down and touch the sand, you’ll find…
Elusive and camera shy
In my experience, the most difficult organisms to photograph in the wild are staurozoans. Even birds in flight are easier. The problem with staurozoans is where they live. I never see them in calm, still pools, where taking pictures would be easy. Instead, they seem to like surge channels where the water constantly sloshes back…
Home, it’s where I want to be
All semester I’ve been taking my Ecology students out in the field every Friday. We’ve visited rivers, forests, natural reserves, endemic habitats, and fish hatcheries–none of which fall into my area of expertise. This year I have several students interested in various aspects of food production, natural/holistic health practices (which sometimes conflict with actual science!),…
I return to the field
For a number of reasons–a lingering injury to my bum knee, scheduling difficulties, and ongoing postconcussion syndrome–I missed the autumn return of the minus tides. At this time of year the lowest tides are in the afternoon, and at the end of the day I just didn’t have the energy to deal with field work….
What is essential is invisible to the eye
When I teach sponge biology to students of invertebrate zoology, I spend a lot of time describing them as phenomenal filter feeders, and suspect that most other professors do the same. There really are no animals that come close to possessing sponges’ ability to remove very small particles from the water. Sponges have this ability…
Playing in the sand, for science
This semester I am teaching a lab for a General Biology course for non-majors. I polled my students on the first day of lab, and their academic plans are quite varied: several want to major in psychology (always a popular major), some want to go into business, a few said they hope to go into…
The flowers have brunch
When low tides occur at or before dawn, a marine biologist working the intertidal is hungry for lunch at the time that most people are getting up for breakfast. And there’s nothing like spending a few morning hours in the intertidal to work up an appetite. At least that’s how it is for me. Afternoon…
The other side of the Bay
Monterey Bay is shaped like a backwards letter ‘C’, with Santa Cruz on the north end and the Monterey Peninsula on the south end. The top of the ‘C’ is comparatively smooth, while the bottom is punctuated by the Monterey Peninsula, which juts north from the city of Monterey. The most striking geologic feature is…