Today’s batch of marine-life photos comes from math professor Abigail Thompson at UC Davis. We’ve met her before (in 2018) when she was widely and publicly demonized for simply writing a piece criticizing diversity statements (see this post, which is missing many links). But today we see her photographic skills with pictures of nudibranchs and other marine invertebrates. As she says, “I spend a lot of time up to my knees in cold water.” Abby’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them. And remember that nudibranchs are molluscs.
These are all from the same 1-mile stretch of Northern California coastline during the past year. The pictures are mostly taken from above the water, at low tide. Most are of sea-slugs, beautiful animals with a terrible (common) name (although nudibranch sounds a bit better), with some ID help from inaturalist. Lots more pictures here or at inaturalist.
Ectopleura marina A hydroid, a (very small) animal that just stays put:
Acanthodoris rhodoceras, nudibranch:
Aeolidia loui, nudibranch:
Polycera atra, nudibranch:
Phidiana hiltoni, nudibranch:
Eurylepta californica, a species of marine flatworm:
Triopha catalinae, nudibranch:
Crassadoma gigantea, actually, a not-very-big scallop. The black dots are eyes:
Epactis handi, a fairly rare (and beautiful) anemone:
Doto kya (probably), nudibranch:
Equipment: One photo was with an iPhone through a microscope, but the rest were taken with an Olympus TG-6 or -7, the almost-indestructible tidepoolers favorite, with a sensational macro setting (I did manage to destroy the TG-6, but it took real effort).
Note: Three new photos added by readers’ request:
Coast-in-a-fog; that’s a deer in the middle. They come down to the water at night (for salt?) so if you’re out very early in the morning you see them there:
View towards Pt. Reyes from the top of a ridge:
I think those are pelicans on top of the rocks, at sunset:
The anemone reminds me of the ones we had in the north west Pacific display at the Department of Invertebrates at The National Zoo. I was hand feeding them perched on a board above the display which was about 6 feet deep. The board had a warp in it and as I leaned over the board tilted and I went in head first. That water is cold.
Might have posted about this once before. The other animal keepers thought it was pretty funny.
What beautiful animals! Thanks, Abigail. I would love to see what the coastline and environs (macro of the tidal pools and the like) look like where these pictures were taken. So in addition to biologist Susan Harrison at Davis, even the mathematicians have field interest in life sciences!
Also thank you for standing up against the current in 2018 and calling out formal compelled speech and recognizing it in the context of the red scare 50’s.
Oh, and thank you for lending your subject matter expertise to K-12!
Thank you so much for these gorgeous photos. The nudibranch family has always fascinated me. Some look as though they might have been figments of an artist’s imagination. I would also like to see what their surroundings (tidal pools, etc.) look like if you have more photos to share.
Wow, I really love these photos! What fascinating creatures these are. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you Abigail. It is a beautiful world.
Can’t say it any better. Incredible! Like the others would love to see the bigger picture if available.
Fantastic. I love those nudibranchs. (My Ph.D. dissertation was on the closely-related gastropods.) It’s so fun to walk along a rocky beach and look closely. The diversity of life there is incredible, especially so if you bend down and focus on the small creatures that abound in the tide pools. It’s a whole world out there!
Thank you for the lovely nudibranchs. I had never seen one until I moved to the west coast in my twenties for grad school. Shortly thereafter I was on vacation with my parents staying at a small inn near Dunvegan, on the Isle of Skye. My dad introduced me as a ‘marine biologist’, which I protested saying I was a mammal biologist who just happened to study seals. Nonetheless the inn’s owners posed me a test, describing an animal they’d seen in the local tide pools which I was able to identify as a nudibranch, thus proving my bona fides as a ‘marine biologist’.
Thank you for these beautiful photos!
Very cool photos! Thanks!
Cool. That’s some wild nudibranch on nudibranch slug action right there!
Great piece and pics.
D.A.
NYC
Exquisite, almost otherworldly … but they’re here!
Fantastic photos! I’m curious to know where you dive. Readers may not know that protected dive sites with good water clarity are scarce in N Cal. A popular one is Pt Lobos near Monterey. Is that one of your photo locations?
Thanks to all for the kind words, glad you enjoyed the photos. None of these are from diving, they’re all from above the water at low tide, crouching near tidepools in generally very uncomfortable positions. And they’re all from the same stretch of coast, near Dillon Beach, north of San Francisco. A few people asked for pictures of the pools themselves, and I realized I have hardly any. I’ll send in a few pictures of the more general area, though.
Dr. Thompson, in view of the requests for where she photographs inverts, sent three more photos, which I’ve added to the lot. Sadly, there are no existing photographs of the tide pools themselves. See the last three photos above.