Among those who sent in photos in response to my self-abasing plea was UC Davis math professor Abby Thompson, who specializes in tide-pool invertebrates. We have some of those today; Abby’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Family Littorinidae (periwinkle) (tentative ID) This snail is decorated with bryozoans – here he’s upside down, and here. . . .
. . . he’s right side up, so you can see the bryozoans:
Tectura paleacea (surfgrass limpet), Surfgrass is about 1/8” wide. This tiny skinny limpet fits perfectly on it:
Doris montereyensis (nudibranch):
Rostanga pulchra (nudibranch). I have several photos from this set of tides with disturbing clear threads in them, which I think must be plastic:”
Family Ammotheidae (sea spider):
Genus Doryteuthis (squid) eggs- in a bunch on the beach:
Squid eggs close up, so you can see the eggs inside one sack:
An unusually colored Epiactis prolifera (brooding anemone). Its babies are nestled into its shoulders:
Strongylocentrotus purpuratus (Pacific purple sea urchin). As juveniles these are green, and I’d only seen juveniles here before. This was big enough to be turning its adult purple, though it still has lots of green spines:
Thanks, as always, Abby. I am always impressed by the range of colors in your subjects. Many (60ish) years ago my high school biology class spent a Saturday morning collecting what we I think just called seaweed in the shallows and beach of our local James River marine estuary. The one thing that I recall vividly was the large numbers of orange and reddish and brown colors….of course with the greens. I still walk that beach on occasion but no longer see the oranges and reds.
Wow, that is such an interesting set!
I would be over the moon to see a sea spider in the wild.
I suppose the brooding anemone is producing daughter polyps by cloning?
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The brooding anemones start female and become hermaphrodites- from wikipedia: “Sperm is released into the water column and after cross-fertilisation (or sometimes self-fertilisation), the young remain within the mother’s gastrovascular cavity during their early development. The mother then expels a mass of eggs and mucus through her mouth and they spread across her oral disc. Cilia move some of them down the column and they become attached to the base of the column ” . This baroque method of reproduction is straightforward compared to jellyfish….
Tide pools are a treasure trove of diverse life. Thank you for your photographs!
SEA spiders!? I spent hours exploring tide pools in Hawaii when I was younger and somehow never learned they exist. My arachnophobia is bad enough on dry land. Now I have to worry about the ocean too.
Just kidding, kind of. The variety of animals in tide pools is fascinating, and I love looking at your pictures. Thank you.
I love the tide pool collections. It’s a world wholly unknown to me. The Nudibranches are my favorites.
Thank you so much for these wonderful photos! I always love your contributions of life in the tidal pools. The invertebrates have such wonderfully varied colors and shapes.
I am obtaining extra pleasure from these beautiful photos and interesting notes. The tide pool collections remind me how much life there is on our beautiful planet that most of us never see. TNX for sharing.
Sadly, in parts of New Zealand, especially around Auckland the tide pools have become a source of food. The pools and the surrounding rocky outcrops have been denuded of all (especially animal) life to the point that a ban on all gathering of food from the rocky shore has been instituted. In the 80s I took Biology field trips to a famous beach, Piha, on the exposed coast, west of Auckland. After bus loads of tourists had raided the rocks there was nothing left to study. So sad, as even for cynical 17yo boys, the rock pools were fascinating.
Thanks for a beautiful reminder how our pools used to be.
Sad to hear- I’m hoping this little stretch of coastline will stay pretty inaccessible for awhile yet. At the easier-to–get-to parts, there are sometimes people stripping mussels off the rocks into 5 gallon buckets. Highly illegal, but there’s no-one to stop them.
Thanks everyone for the kind words!
Also shown in the first two photographs is a pretty rhodophyte, probably “Ptilota filicina”, the Southern Sea Fern.