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| Old sign, with rusty staple marks. The logs are just above the tide line around the bay, and protect a variety of salt-tolerant dune plants and grasshoppers. |
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| Detritus, scrambled, tossed ashore, and left to bake in the sun at the highest tide line. Rockweed bladders, so dry they crunched like potato chips when touched, floating miniature "peas", the bladders of sargassum seaweed, bits of dried algae and eelgrass, all very dry. And these tiny tubes, unidentified. |
Not present in the photo; a couple of scraps of plastic. I took that out and carried it away, along with a handful of other pieces and too many chunks of styrofoam.
The tubes are hollow; at home a darning needle slid in one end and out the other of a 1 cm. scrap; there was nothing inside to slow it down. Under a bright light and the microscope, the tube is papery, and yellowish, with those circular rings. It's 1.5 mm. in diameter. A worm tube, maybe? A structure from a molted crab? A segmented worm with no innards? I don't know.
I brought some of the dry rockweed home. Soaked in salt water for a few minutes, it became soft and pliant again, but slightly slimy. My hermit crabs thought it was delicious.
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| A twisty piece of bleached stump. And wildlife: look for the wasp and the baby maple tree. |
Thank you for your encouragement! There are times, these days, when I'm tempted to give in to despair; your support helps to keep me on track.
ReplyDeleteI was hoping someone else would reply about the tubes, as I've seen them before too, but my guess is some kind of marine worm. They seem too thin to be the feather duster worms (plus they are segmented in a way that the aforementioned worms' tubes aren't). So many mysteries just out of reach, (presumably) below the intertidal zone...
ReplyDeleteI would think they are probably some sort of worm. Maybe still someone will come up with a name, I hope.
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