Nebalia (Muddy Buddies, Part II)

This is Part II of a three-part series, reproduced from my old blog. (Here) Part I, Part III.

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Continued from Muddy Buddies, Part I , in which I recounted the discovery of some unknown (to me) sea creatures.

At home, I dug out my supplies: water to wash the sand off my finds, a good magnifying glass, my hand microscope (up to a power of 40x), a small paintbrush for manipulating delicate tentacled objects, a bright lamp. And a stack of books.

First; a birds-eye view. Length; about 1/4 inch, counting the tail structure. Two very prominent red eyes; the most arresting feature. Colour: once cleaned, almost transparent, with a creamy tinge and darker central section. Legs to the sides, two hooked tentacles, grippers or something in front. And a prominent tail, about half the length of the entire creature, curving downwards.

With the magnifying lens, the tail seemed to be segmented, and the front had some sort of a pointy beak; there was a similar pointy structure at the end of what looked like a shell, above the tail. A shell means a crustacean. I turned to my books.

The creature as I saw it and drew it, having no camera.

In Seashore Life of Puget Sound, (etc.) , I found it. Page 241, three whole paragraphs and a photo. My beastie now has a name; Nebalia pugettensis, belonging to an order called the Leptostraca. (Lepto=thin, straca=shell.) No English name. The shell is called a carapace, like the shell of a turtle. That little beak thingy is called a rostrum. (Hey, I thought that was a stand for the speaker at a convention! The dictionary tells me it can also be an elongated beak. Well, ok, if you say so.)

A photo from the web, but a different species, nebalia bipes.
A website mentioned feathery feet. Time to open up the microscope. The nice thing about the hand microscope is that I can look at things in situ. I'm glad I did, this time. On the piece of paper towel where my nebalia were drying, I could see, at full power (40x) long, ostrich-feather plumes at the end of the tail, almost transparent. But so delicate! When I moved the nebalia to a better viewing base (a white plastic lid), using the tip of the paintbrush at the thick of the thorax as a lift, and looked again, the delicate fronds were broken off, leaving ragged stumps.

Now I could see that the carapace and rostrum, and a long point over the tail, are transparent. The colour comes from the pale legs and thorax underneath. 4 legs on either side, with another thing that could be a leg or an antenna; my samples were dead and curled up, making it hard to distinguish them. Two more pointy things at the front. The tail was definitely segmented, looking like a telescoping leg of a camera stand. Two little vanes at the end of the tail, and the sad remains of feathers.

And the eyes! Big, round, and deep, deep red. And segmented, beautifully regular honeycombed sections, each one an individual eye, no doubt . Enlarged and somehow hardened, they would make nice jewels for a ring or necklace.

Next: what were these guys doing on that beach? I'll leave that for the next post.

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Next post: Muddy Buddies, Part III