Mountain peaks on the flats

More oldies dug out of the hard drive. Just because.

Worm poop mountain, Boundary Bay beach.

And barnacle peak, White Rock beach.

Farewell party?

My aquarium critters needed eelgrass. Lots of eelgrass. I'm going to take them, tank and all, on a 5 hour trip, probably bumpy at times, and they'll have to leave most of their water behind. Several gallons of water sloshing back and forth unpredictably can cause quite a bit of damage, so I'll leave them an inch or so, and pack the tank with wet eelgrass. The anemones and snails will hide under the sand, and the hermits will cling to the eelgrass, and all will be well. I hope.

Very tiny hermit, climbing the eelgrass.

Down at Boundary Bay, I found everything all laid out for me; piles of fresh eelgrass, with roots and the diatom fuzz the hermits love, big sheets of sea lettuce, even a fresh holdfast, just the right size for the tank. The wind and tide had been working in my favour; the tide was high and still coming in, and the wind had whipped the waves into a froth. Together, they'd dug up an eelgrass bed from the lower intertidal zone and deposited it, still fresh and barely tangled, at the water line for me.

My hermits are happy.

So were the wind surfers.

I had another item on my shopping list: I wanted photos of spiders for the Arachtober group. So I poked around the fences and alleys of Beach Grove, peering into cracks and under shrubs. (The residents there are very tolerant; mostly they smile. One man told me there were many wolf spiders along his fence. I didn't find any.)

I found, first, a couple of abandoned paper wasp nests.

Look at this (click) full size to see the texture of the paper.

And yes, I found two spiders.

Large cross spider.

These get their name from the cross shape (sort of) on their abdomen. The scientific name is Araneus diadematus, meaning "crown spider", which doesn't sound quite right. I don't see a crown. This one looks more like a Christmas tree, all decorated. The ones here in North Delta are mostly orange and brown; both the Beach Grove spiders were brown and grey.

And then I drove home, saying, "Goodbye, see you later," to all the old favourite landmarks on the way. Next week at this time, I'll be on the Island.

Pink.

A trio of forgotten photos.

Fireweed, near Heckman Pass, Hwy 20.

In the high Chilcotin hills, here around 5000 feet, where the nights are chilly even in August, the fireweed flowers are smaller than those we see in the Lower Mainland, the colours more intense.

Sea rocket, Boundary Bay dunes.

Pink aster in a Beach Grove garden.

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.

Hope your Canada Day ...

... was as good as mine!

The tide was low near noon again, and the sun was scorching. I joined the streams of people heading out to the border marker in the middle of Boundary Bay. I didn't quite make it; the water was still a bit out of my depth, carrying a dry-land camera. But I plowed through eelgrass beds, thigh-deep, until the tide was at its lowest, then returned to the marker.

Where I met Tim, who blogs at Think Big - No, Even Bigger. He had come out to see how the starfish are doing, and incidentally, to see if I was there. Once he'd made it to the marker and taken a few photos with his underwater camera (see his post on TBNEB, with video), he walked back with me to the shore a kilometre away.

He has sharp eyes; he saw a big anemone in the shadow of the eelgrasses, where all I could see was a dark splotch. It was anchored on an empty clamshell, so I brought it home and settled it in the tank. It seems happy enough.

Plumose anemone, Metridium senile

Standing tall, about three inches. Fully grown, it can reach well over twice that.

These anemones come in a variety of colours, from white to yellow to orange or brown. Wikipedia adds pink, grey and olive green, which I don't remember ever seeing. Tim has photos from the border marker, underwater; the ones there are pure white, pale beige, green, or a deep, reddish brown. (Go look.)

As usual, there were hitchhikers. I'll tell you about these later on. After I've finished with the photos of the drenched ten-lined June beetle.

And thanks, Tim!

Purple starfish! Healthy purple starfish!

I've found about a dozen of the purple starfish, the ones most affected by the sea star wasting syndrome. And they look healthy!

The way it worked out was this: on the most recent trip to the low tide line, when I found all those six-armed and mottled stars, I waded as close as I could to the border marker. Couldn't get quite there; the water would have been up to my waist, and I wasn't dressed for that.

But I stopped there to take photos of an eagle, and then a pair of eagles perched on the top of the marker.

One eagle

Two eagles. He seems to be doing some sort of dance.

They sang a duet for a while, him squealing and her burbling, while I tried to find solid footing underwater to get a good shot. I gave up and backed off, to take a photo of the whole marker with the reflections in the water.

Striped zones: watermarks, bare cement, barnacles, and a layer of seaweed, then the shelf. Then the whole thing reverses in the water.

At home, I had other photos to sort, and too much to do; the eagles got set aside and forgotten. It wasn't until tonight, cleaning up the recent files, that I saw the starfish.

Do you see them? Look on the right-hand end of the shelf for a pile, and then scan left.

From here, they look healthy enough; properly spread out, wearing all their arms. There's even at least one young one, just under the ladder.

This makes me happy.

As I trudged back towards the distant shore, one of the eagles passed me, in a hurry.

Things to do, errands to run, chocolates (or fish) to get for her ...

Fish on the sand

In the eelgrass beds at the bottom of the intertidal zone, fish dart through the thickets, usually visible only as a flash of movement, a streaking silver shape dashing from shadow to shadow, or a panicked thrash to escape my clumsy foot. They're usually not the fish I see in the upper zones, the sculpins and the flatfish, but they speed away so fast that I haven't been able to recognize any.

This last trip to the low tide line, though, the shallows were littered with dead and dying small fish; I was able to identify three species.

Another Pacific sand lance, Ammodytes hexapterus. These grow to about 11 inches long, so this is a youngster.

In one small area, I counted over 50 of these, all dead, but still fresh, surprisingly still untouched by gulls or crabs. They were all young; the adults spawn and die in mid-winter here. I am wondering what caused this die-off.

A larger sand lance, still alive, but barely. The back is a glittery blue-green, which should help with camouflage in the eelgrass beds, at least from above. At night, they burrow into the sand, to hide from predators.

Mixed with the sand lances, a few darker, larger fish stood out.

Pacific snake prickleback, Lumpenus sagitta. About 8 inches long.

Another. This was still alive, but not able to swim away.

Again, these were young fish; the adults grow to 20 inches long and spawn in the winter.

One more; a beautiful singing midshipman, no longer able to sing.

A steampunk fish, looking as if he were made of riveted plates. Plainfin midshipman, Porichthys notatus, about 8 inches long.

These are night-swimming fish; during the day, they hide under rocks. I found a male, guarding eggs, about this same time three years ago, under a rock at the boat launch. He was fatter and longer than this one.

The "rivets" are lines of photopores, cells that emit light. They may help to attract prey at night. (Although we don't really know that; it's human speculation. We do like to imagine that we understand Ma Nature.)

Belly up, showing the pattern of photopores, and his delicate colouring.

Zooming in to the tail end, to show the little lights, and - look closely - tiny waving three-fingered hands, all in a row.

I didn't pick this one up; some midshipmen have poisonous spines. I'm not sure if this species does, but I'm not risking it.

And I'm left wondering why all these suddenly showed up dead, all at once. The water was clear, it smelled fresh, there was no scum or oil sheen. There is construction going on 'way back at the shore, but that's a full kilometre away. Worrisome.

Another handful of fish

This one's a Pacific Snake Prickleback, aka Eel-blenny.

Lumpenus sagitta, about 8 inches long. Alive, but sluggish, so I'm holding him underwater.

Again, more on these later; I'm still sorting fishy photos.

A fish in the hand ...

is worth any number in the sea.

Pacific sand lance, Ammodytes hexapterus

More on these later.

Messy crab, with a hat.

Three weeks ago, wading in the eelgrass beds at the bottom of the tidal plain, I saw hundreds of egg masses, pink and yellow, and their parents, opalescent nudibranchs and bubble shells. A couple of days ago, the tide was even lower, and I spent two hours making figure-eights in the same area. And there were no pink and yellow eggs, no nudibranchs, few bubble shells.

Everything has its own season.

This week, the beds are full of blue anemones, sea stars, and crabs. Unusual crabs: crabs I'd never seen before.

For example, this little guy.

He's less than an inch across.

He is completely covered in algae or diatom fuzz, and is wearing a comparatively huge barnacle on his back. Good for camouflage; not so good for the purpose of identification.

The carapace is triangular, with a long cap protecting his head area. It's hard to tell if it's smooth or bumpy, but the edges are wavy, rather than toothed like the shore crabs' carapaces, or sharp, like the kelp crabs. His pincers are bluish*, with orange tips; the legs are also tipped with orange.

I've been examining the photos in the Encyclopedia with a lens, trying to find a match. The closest I can find is the sharpnose crab, Scyra acutifrons, which grows to just under 2 inches across. Adult males have long pincers, but the females are similar to this one. Or maybe he's a juvenile decorator crab, Loxorhynchus crispatus. These grow to about 5 inches across the carapace.

Both these crabs "decorate" their shells, adding algae, anemones, barnacles, diatoms, what have you. And in both species, the males have long pincers, while the females' pincers are about the length of the legs.

Here he is upside-down, and struggling to right himself. From here, he looks like a male, with the narrow plate on the abdomen.

Here's how I saw him at first, under a foot of water:

Under the water, the diatom fuzz is more apparent. His pincers are definitely blue. His eyes look blue, too.

Do you recognize this crab? Can you help with the ID?

*The blue coloring could also be because he is young, and his skin is semi-transparent, so the blue blood shows through.

Counting stars

Another young starfish, looking healthy.

Mottled star, on stone at top of intertidal zone

In a couple of square meters of stones, I found a dozen of these baby mottled stars, from about an inch to two inches across. Two looked faded and limp, but all the rest were healthy and clinging strongly to their chosen stones. I didn't see any lesions, the first sign of disease, nor any twisted limbs.

I've found them, so far, at the deep end of the lower intertidal zone on the west side of Boundary Bay, and here, at the very top, where the tide reaches only part of each day. In between, not a starfish to be seen, though I walked back and forth across the whole length of the mid-tide zone looking for them.

I haven't seen any of our usual purple stars, neither adult nor juvenile. I hope the starfish wasting syndrome hasn't wiped them out completely.

Where the wild things are

The critters of the upper intertidal zone, with the exception of the insane mud snails, go into hiding at low tide; Boundary Bay becomes a wide zone of bare, grey sand. But when the tide is low enough, we can walk out to the last sandbars and the eelgrass beds between them. There, life goes on, busily, whether the water is coming or going.

These photos are in chronological order, as I walked out. Some animals only show up in the deeper areas, where the tide rarely drops below the tips of the tallest eelgrass.

Small Dungeness crabs start appearing at the inner edge of the beds. This is under about 4 inches of water.

Opalescent nudibranch, on kelp. There were many in the shallower eelgrass beds, all much more vividly coloured than the one I found last month at the boat ramp.

(More on these, later.)

Fuzzy eelgrass.

The fuzz along the blades of grass is made up of diatoms and bacteria. It doesn't look appetizing, but this is my hermits and crabs absolute favourite food. They're not the only gourmets; the fuzziest grass in this zone is loaded with bubble shells, nudibranchs, skeleton shrimp, amphipods, and other small, darting beasties. It seems that every second blade has its collection of egg masses, pink, white, and yellow; the next generation will be well provided for.

I don't know what was in that ball of pinkish stuff. It felt solid, and was firmly stuck to the eelgrass.

If you look closely at the photo, you may find the baby starfish.

Dungeness crab molt. It must be handy to get rid of your old skin when it loses its youthful smoothness.

Looking back. The photo reminds me, in tone and layout, of an old postcard in my Mom's album.

Purple sand dollar, under flowing water. This one's alive, so it still has the dark spines.

Looking north, across the bay to the hills of South Surrey.

One sandbar to go before the border marker. The water was about knee-deep from here to the bar, then the bottom drops off quickly.

Green burrowing anemone. The deep green is from ingested algae.

I found many empty clamshells; most of them contained small mottled starfish. There are three here; do you see the third?

About a third of the small starfish had the twisted, upturned armtips that may be caused by starfish wasting syndrome. I didn't see any lesions, and there were quite a few babies.

Almost every clamshell that contained starfish also held a few tiny, almost transparent shrimp. Four of them, one a female carrying young, came home with me in a handful of eelgrass. I'll have photos of these, later on.

At the outer edge of the last sandbar, as I watched, the eelgrass stretched out in the outgoing current suddenly faltered, drooped, turned back towards me. The tide was coming in. Time to go.

I had time to stop, once I'd reached shallower water, and take a couple more photos.

Blending in.

Jellyfish, alive and swimming, made visible by its shadow on the sand beneath.

I brought home a small bag of fuzzy eelgrass for my hermits; as usual, there were hitchhikers. Some of them, tomorrow.

Sandy

Sand dollar test, half buried in sand.

Just because I liked the textures and patterns.

I'm still working on the rest of the photos from the eelgrass beds, and photos of a couple of obstructionist hitchhikers. And some pink eggs, too.

Tomorrow: beasties green, orange, purple, and red.

In three words

Happy dance

Yum!

That's all.

192 photos

This week, the tides have been extremely low in the afternoons. I arrived at the beach early enough this afternoon to walk to the far edge, to where there was nothing but a narrow channel of water between me and the border marker in the middle of the bay.

I came back with the camera loaded, critters to settle and photograph at home, beasties to identify; I'll be busy for a bit.

For now, here's a hitchhiker that came home on some eelgrass: a pinhead snail. A small pinhead, that is.

White body, round shell. Unidentifiable at this age.

There were two of these; I was surprised at how fast they can move. Between the time I focussed on this little guy with the camera, and reached for the shutter button, he repeatedly moved out of range. I finally just aimed at the general area until he happened to wander into focus.

On staples and little boxes

Sea lettuce. Barnacles. And eelgrass. The staple foods for my aquarium critters. Barnacles for the leafy hornmouth snail, sea lettuce for the hermits, the crabs, and the bubble shells. And eelgrass, preferably decorated with hydroids, for the hermits and snails. Anything else is a special treat, but these three are essentials.

This week, the high tide brought in a truckload of fresh, bright green sea lettuce, which pleased the bubble shells; one ate so much of it that I could see the green in his stomach right through the shell and flesh.

But though I walked a long way, just at the edge of the incoming waves, I only found one small eelgrass plant. And it was a meagre, frayed one, mostly straggly stem and browning leaves. I would have left it there, except that it was the only one available. I and the hermits would have missed a treat.

Settling it into the tank, I noticed a small patch of bryozoans on one thin blade of grass, just below the water surface. A live patch, too; I could even see, with a lens, movement on its surface.

I rarely get to see these; out of the water, they shut down instantly. Underwater, the turbidity and the depth make them into a faint blur. Too much light, and they're asleep. And the individual animals are so very tiny; millimetre-high, transparent funnels.

Encrusting bryozoan colony, Membranipora membranacea, awake and feeding.

This is a small colony, about 8 to 10 animals from edge to edge. Each individual zooid lives inside a little box; seen from above, they look like walls, but there is a top, as well. The animal lies horizontally inside, and when the situation looks right, extends its feeding funnel up into the water. At the slightest disturbance, the funnels disappear and all that can be seen are the walls.

Hydroids and anemones have stinging tentacles, to subdue their prey; these bryozoans do not, but are filter feeders like the barnacles, relying on water currents to deliver their groceries. They will eat diatoms and bacteria, as well as other planktonic swimmers, like my newly-hatched crab zoea.

The little spines at the corners of their boxes (difficult to see here, but we really need a microscope for a better view, like this one) help to make the colony an uncomfortable base for a hungry Doridella nudibranch. I found several of these a few years back, on kelp, eating bryozoans, spines or no spines. There were none on this little eelgrass; not enough prey to keep them here.

...

That was the beginning. I kept finding more and more interesting things on that eelgrass. Unidentified "thingies", tomorrow. And a thingie mimic.

A few dune plants

The dunes above the beach on the west shore of Boundary Bay are half-wild, half tame gone feral. Logs and scraps of broken driftwood litter the sand, overrun with a tangle of native plants and lichens, but on the inner edge, bordering the last row of houses of Beach Grove, the home-owners have extended themselves beyond their walls, spreading chairs and hammocks, kayaks and abandoned toys well out into the sand. Some have blended their own garden plants in with the beach pea and sea rocket; here's a patch of purple and yellow irises, there's a couple of blue blossom shrubs, further along a mound of evergreen roses. Invasive Scotch broom rubs elbows with gumweed, heal-all, and nasturtiums.

Large-headed sedge, Carex macrocephalus. They grow best where the sand is driest.

Bee foraging in flowers. A garden escape, maybe?

Flowers, grasses, and ant.

"Garden" in a knothole.

Under the Scotch broom. I don't know what the white flowers are. The pinkish bits are purple dead-nettle.

I don't recognize this one. A garden escape, again?

The flowers, or maybe buds. I'll have to go back later to see what develops.