Today’s collection is from math prof Abby Thompson at UC Davis, who sends us intertidal photos from California. Abby’s IDs and captions are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.
The photos were taken at Dillon Beach.
Orienthella piunca (nudibranch), with eggs (the white squiggly things), and a small crab spectating”:
Crab tracks- these always look to me like some complicated bicycle tire track, but apparently it’s just what happens if you skitter sideways on your claws. The crab is buried in the sand at the end of the trail, close-up in the next photo:
Crab- probably Romaleon antennarium, Pacific rock crab. Hunkering down, waiting for the tide to come back in:
Epiactis handi (sea anemone). This is the unusual species of Epiactis which seems to occur only in a single (and hard-to-access) location near me. I like to check in on them periodically:
Aegires albopunctatus (nudibranch) Salt-and-pepper nudibranch:
Pycnogonum stearnsi (Sea spider). Nestled into the seaweed, completely out of the water, on top of a rock:
Emerita analoga (Pacific sand crabs). Walking the beach at low tide sometimes it looks as though the sand is puckered- that’s likely to be bevy of some kind of tiny sand crab. This photo shows the “puckering” from a distance of a few feet:
Pacific sand crabs from close up. A footstep will spook them, and they bury themselves completely in a split second. Not a great photo, but if you look carefully I think you can see each one has its stalked eyes poking up:
Mopalia muscosa (mossy chiton). The inside of the shell- the animal is long gone, leaving these beautiful interior colors:
The beach at sunrise.
I thought of the exquisite style in this series earlier today — and then .. here it is!
Oh wow. Top notch, and a different, excellent new style of photography I haven’t seen here much. Which is saying quite a lot as WEIT photos are very high quality.
I can’t imagine how muddy you got, how many pairs of shoes you went through, and how many hours you spent getting those pictures.
Well done!
D.A.
NYC
Weird and wonderful! Thank you for showing me some things I had never seen before.
These are always a special treat. Thank you for sharing!
Fantastic pictures. I’ve never seen a pychnogonid alive. (I suppose I still haven’t, but your picture is as close as I’ve gotten to seeing one in the flesh.)
The crab trackway is interesting. The fossil record is full of trackways of various sorts that were preserved on bedding planes when the surfaces were soft. There’s an entire branch of paleontology, Ichnology, that aims to study these things. It’s surprisingly difficult to identify the track makers, so paleontologists have given Linnaean binomials to the tracks themselves.
Wow
Spectacular photos, Abby. The nudibranch, sea spider, and especially the sea anemone are exceptional.
For me, these are a unique pleasure.
Fabulous pictures of many things I have never seen. I’ve often wondered about the beautiful aqua coloring on the inside of mossy chiton shells. Is it useful in some way or the disposal of something or???
Great question! but I have no idea. I’ve also been baffled at how often the interior of the shell is described as a way to identify the species. I mean, it works, but only if the animal is dead.
Thanks for these fine photos & comments.
Thanks everyone for the kind words!
The sea anemone image is especially gorgeous!