Failed rescue

 A bit of excitement today. The sun came out, and I went to Oyster Bay to look for shells for my hermits. I found four, the wrong species, but maybe they'll be acceptable. Hermit crabs can be picky.

The tide was high again, and the waves were rambunctious, busy tossing eelgrass onto the shore, all fresh, with roots and all. I collected a fair amount; the hermits love it, and it can be stored for a while in a bucket of sea water.

At home, I washed it all, getting rid of fragments that would clog the filters, and put a few of the larger clumps in the tank. Later, after I'd done a bit of maintenance, I noticed a yellow blob of jelly on one of the blades of eelgrass. Looked like eggs, but not quite. Wrong shape, slightly stripy. I fished it out and looked at it under a loupe: it was too small to see clearly with the magnifying lens. Not eggs. A baby sea hare!

Zebra sea hare, Taylor's sea hare, Phyllaplysia taylori, 3 mm.

The "Zebras" live on eelgrass, eating the small organisms that grow on the blades. I found one once before, in November of 2013; it was bigger, three times the size of this one. Zebras lay their eggs in the summer, and they hatch into crawling miniatures of the adults, with no swimming stage in between. They grow, usually, to about 4 cm.

They are related to the nudibranchs, or sea slugs, but the nudibranchs carry their gills outside their body (hence "nude gills" = nudibranch) and the sea hares' gills are inside, under a fold at the back. On the head there are two tentacles and the rhinopores, which sense tastes and scents.

They live exclusively on eelgrass, and are well camouflaged, blending in to the color, always orienting themselves lengthwise on the blades, and with stripes that echo the stripes of mature eelgrass.

Being tossed and rolled and scraped across the sand is stressful. I hoped that "Zeeby" would be ok, and I checked on him several times; he moved to the tip of his eelgrass blade, and sat  there until a hermit found him. When I looked, the hermit was eating him. So sad!

Hermits are scavengers. They do not eat live critters. They ignore healthy eggs and crawling snails and open barnacles. When the animals are dead or dying, though, they pounce. It's their job. So I guess that "Zeeby" must have been too badly damaged by his trip through the surf to make it.

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Hoy hice un hallazgo. Salió el sol, y fui a Oyster Bay a buscar conchas para mis ermitaños. Encontré cuatro; no son de la especie que prefieren los ermitaños, pero tal vez se conformen. Los ermitaños pueden ser exigentes.

La marea estaba alta otra vez, y las olas hacían alboroto, muy ocupadas en aventar plantas enteras de Zostera marina, con todo y raices, a la playa. Recogí una buena bolsa llena; a los ermitaños les gusta, y puedo guardar lo sobrante en una cubeta de agua de mar.

Lavé la Zostera, y coloqué varias plantas en el acuario. Después de hacer algunos quehaceres de mantenimiento, estaba mirando el acuario, cuando vi una bolita como de jalea amarilla.Parecían huevos de caracol, pero no exactamente; tenía manchas como de rayas oscuras. La saqué y la miré con una lupa fuerte: era demasiado chica para mi lente de 10x. No eran huevos. ¡Una liebre marina infantil!

Es una liebre "Zebra", o liebre de Taylor, Phyllaplysia taylori. Estos animalitos viven en la planta Zostera, comiendo los organismos que allí crecen. Hace algunos años, encontré otro, más grande; este era de 3mm. de largo, y aquel de 1cm. Los Zebra ponen sus huevos en el verano, y eclosionan como adultos miniaturos, sin pasar por una etapa de natación. Llegan a crecer hasta más o menos 4cm.

Son parientes de las babosas marinas, los nudibranquios, pero las agallas de los nudibranquios las llevan afuera del cuerpo; las liebres marinas las llevan por dentro, bajo una doblez en el dorso. En la cabeza llevan dos tentáculos y dos rinóforos, órganos sensorios que identifican sabores y olores.

Viven exclusivamente en la hierba Zostera, y tienen camuflaje excelente, tanto que se desaparecen, llevando el mismo color y diseño que la hierba, con sus rayas que copian las de la hierba.

Arrancarse de su sitio, voltearse, aventarse y arrastrarse sobre la arena es traumático. Esperaba que "Zebrita" saldría adelante, pero de vez en cuando, iba a buscarla para ver como estaba. Se fue hasta la punta de su hoja de Zostera, y allí la encontró un ermitaño. Cuando miré, el ermitaño la estaba comiendo. ¡Tan triste!

Los ermitaños no comen carne viva. Son carroñeros; comen detritos. Cuando encuentran huevos vivos, las pasan de alto; lo mismo con caracoles o bálanos vivos, o cualquier otro animal vivo. Si los encuentran muertos o casi muertos, los comen. Es su trabajo.

Parece que la pobre Zebrita estaba demasiado dañada para sobrevivir. No la rescaté a tiempo.

Rabbit ears on a green zebra

Ten minutes on the beach; that's all I needed. The weather was miserable, and I wasn't dressed for it; Laurie's feet hurt and I was trying to ignore a migraine. But I had to go to the beach because my critters were getting bored with their store-bought diet. They wanted green stuff, green and soft and salty.

Luckily, the tide was just off the peak and the water was choppy; all along the shore were piles of ripped-up eelgrass, still wet, still fresh. I collected a bagful in my ten minutes. Long blades of eelgrass, sheets of sea lettuce, the durable red Turkish towel, rockweed, delicate red lacy fronds, sugar-wrack kelp, a tall, leafy, bladder-bearing weed, and handfuls of blackish hair; everything newly deposited in a convenient pile for me.

My critters are happy again.

Most of the animals that have the bad luck to be riding uprooted seaweeds at high tide end up dying when the water recedes. I checked my gleanings over carefully, as usual, turning up a few feeble amphipods and a couple of snails.

One of the blades of eelgrass had a brighter green spot on it, barely noticed as I planted the roots in the aquarium. A few minutes later, I saw it again, swimming, and fished it out.

Zebra leafslug, 1 cm. long, on sea lettuce. (I had to fade out the background, almost the same shade as the slug. Good camouflage.)

I had never seen one of these before, but it was easy to find in my Encyclopedia, near the nudibranch section. But it's a sea hare, not a nudi.

The sea hares are related to the nudibranch, the bubble shells, and the aglaja that I've found before, all Gastropods among the Heterobranchia. The bubble shells are like snails that carry their shells mostly inside the body. Nudibranchs have no shells. And sea hares may or may not have shells, which like the bubble shells, they wear under the skin. In the zebra leafslug (aka Taylor's sea hare, or Phyllaplysia taylori) the shell is probably just a small plate, invisible inside the body.

Another difference: the nudibranchs' gills are outside the body cavity, (therefore nudi = nude, branchia = gills). The sea hare's gills are inside. On the photo above, towards the back on the right, there is a projection, like a flap. Sea water enters through a hole on the head end of this flap, and exits on the other.

While I checked him out and looked up info, the leaf slug rested on the sea lettuce in a bowl. He barely moved; I wondered if he was dying after his stressful afternoon, in the waves and in my car. But then I learned that he lives on eelgrass, eating the diatoms and algae that grow there. I put him on a knot of eelgrass in the aquarium and he woke up and started to wander.

"The Zeeb", on eelgrass in the aquarium.

Sea hares got their name long ago, from the two tentacles on the front of the head. They are more like flaps of skin, folded so that they look like rabbit ears. A little back from these are the rhinophores (from rhino = nose, phore = carrier, Greek), those tall white tubes. Zeeb smells with these.

The eyes are at the base of the rhinophores, but probably don't see more than the difference between day and night.

 Zeeb is a youngster, about half his adult size. He's a hermaphrodite, with both male and female organs, capable of fertilizing another leafslug and then laying millions of his/her own eggs. On the eelgrass, of course.

. . . sea hares often forming mating chains of 3 or more animals where the ones in the middle are acting as males and females simultaneously. (http://www.seaslugforum.net/message/17079)

Zeeb's been prowling around the eelgrass and the glass, cleaning up the algae for a day now. I hope the aquarium suits him. I'll have to keep him well supplied with fresh eelgrass. More reasons to go to the beach!