Friday, August 14, 2015

Stones and jelly

Stones under water:

Near the high tide line, Boundary Bay

Stones under jelly:

Lion's mane jelly, Cyanea capillata. A small one. The first I've seen washed up this year.

It's the end of the Lion's Mane's life cycle; they've raised their young, and now they drift, dying, onto the nearest beach.

The female jellyfish carries its fertilized eggs in its tentacle where the eggs grow into larva. When the larva are old enough, the female deposits them on a hard surface where the larva soon grow into polyps. (Wikipedia
The jellyfish are pelagic for most of their lives but tend to settle in shallow, sheltered bays towards the end of their one-year lifespan. (

The top few metres of the intertidal zone along the southeastern coast of Boundary Bay are stony and a bit steep (in comparison to the rest of the tidal flat plain.) Jellyfish that get tossed up here are often shredded before they arrive. I must go down to the flatter shore east of White Rock, to see how many are coming in this year.


No comments:

Post a Comment

I'm having to moderate all comments because Blogger seems to have a problem notifying me. Sorry about that. I will review them several times daily, though, until this issue is fixed.

Also, I have word verification on, because I found out that not only do I get spam without it, but it gets passed on to anyone commenting in that thread. Not cool!

Powered By Blogger