Algae and not

Tide-pooling in the lower intertidal zone; the seaweeds, and seaweed look-alikes:

Masses of sea lettuce, Ulva spp., and faded kelp fronds.

In the upper intertidal zone, I find both of these, the sea lettuce and the kelp, but in pieces, washed up by the waves. Here, the sea lettuce is firmly attached to the rocks. It looks fragile, but pulling on a few blades, I find that not only do they not come loose, they don't break, either.

More sea lettuce, a red bladed alga, some brownish, feathery seaweeds, and I think those are pink branching hydrocorals.

The sea lettuce in the first photo had thin, long blades. This species has wide blades.

There are coralline look-alikes; coral leaf seaweeds, which are algae; the hydrocorals are animals. These have pink branches and whitish tips to each branch.

More of the same. With a purplish green sea urchin.

And another feathery brown algae. With sea lettuce, rockweed, bladed red algae. And a hermit crab.

At the very bottom of the exposed intertidal zone, assorted encrusting species.

It's hard to tell what these are. The pink and yellow bands are probably encrusting sponges. And then again, some could be encrusting bryozoans. The deep red could be more sponges, but Turkish washcloth, a seaweed, also has an encrusting phase. To be sure, you'd have to take a sample and examine it microscopically.

Identification is fun, but it's also a delight just to enjoy the patterns and colours, exposed here, oh, so briefly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Explorando en la zona intramareal más baja; algunas algas y cosas que se les parecen.

Foto #1: Grandes cantidades de lechuga marina, Ulva spp., y hojas de kelp, ya blanqueadas por el sol. En la zona intramareal alta, encuentro estos dos, pero en trozos, arrancados y aventados a la playa por las olas. Aquí, la lechuga de mar está bien fija en la roca. Parecen tan frágiles, pero si trato de quitar un manojo de la roca, no solo me resiste, pero ni se rompen las hojas.

Foto #2: Más lechuga de mar, pero de una especie diferente, una alga roja de hojas anchas, algas como pequeños arbustos, y hydrocorales color de rosa (también se conocen como corales falsos). La lechuga de mar en la primera foto tenía hojas largas y delgadas; la de esta foto tiene hojas anchas.

Hay algas que se parecen a estos hydrocorales. Pero los hydrocorales son animales. Tienen las ramas de varios colores y las puntas de las ramas son blancas.

Foto #3: Más de lo mismo. Con un erizo de mar verde, color violeta.

Foto #4: Otra alga en forma de arbusto. Con lechuga de mar, Fucus spp., otra alga roja de hojas anchas, y un cangrejito ermitaño.

Foto #5: En la parte más baja de la zona intramareal expuesta ese dia, una variedad de especies encrustantes.

Es difícil acertar a que especie estos pertenecen. Las manchas color de rosa y amarillas puede ser que sean esponjas encrustantes. Pero es posible que algunas sean briozoos. Las areas color de rojo fuerte también pueden ser esponjas. Pero hay un alga roja, la toallita turca, que tiene una fase encrustante. Para identificar alguno de estos con confianza, habría que tomar una muestra y examinarla bajo una lente fuerte o incluso un microscopio.

Es divertido tratar de indentificar estas cosas, pero también es un placer solamente mirar los diseños y los colores, que fueron expuestos aquí a la luz, por tan poco tiempo.

Not-so-perfect housekeeping

 I do clean my aquarium. I really do. I scrub the walls every week with a toothbrush and a green dish scrubber (not metal, because it scratches the glass). I change the water and clean out old algae and vacuum up leftover foodstuffs. And scrub those walls.

But there's always a corner I miss, hidden behind an anemone I don't want to pester, or buried in sand that a crab just piled up in her everlasting building project. And whatever I want to look at always seems to hide right behind the messy corner.

I was watching a big, fat, shiny worm gobbling shrimp pellets, waiting for him to come within camera range (and he never did), and stopped to take a photo of a limpet eating, instead.

In the algae-infested corner, of course.

So frustrating!

I usually delete these photos if I can't clean them up, but I kept this one, as is. The limpet is eating the algae; that's why she's in that corner.

There are at least three species of algae growing here. First, those brownish spots. These grow really fast; within a week they'll cover all the walls of the tank. Several species of algae grow as crusts or microscopic dots; these are among them.

Then there's the brighter green algae; these look like the beginnings of sea lettuce.

And the small red spots: several red algae species grow in two stages. Turkish washcloth, Mastocarpus sp. for example, is a crust in one generation, and the next generation grows as a large, lumpy, towel-like blade. These slow-growing red spots may be Turkish washcloth. They have also colonized the water pump, and are very hard to scrape off.

The limpet isn't the only one eating algae; white spots are probably copepods; there's a larger one inside the shell of the limpet, wagging its tail. Good eating here, it says!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cada semana limpio el acuario. De veras, sí que lo limpio. Friego las paredes con un cepillo de dientes y un estropajo verde (no de metal, pues estos dejan marcas en el vidrio). Cambio el agua y saco algas viejas y aspiro restos de comida. Y pulo esas paredes.

Sin embargo, siempre se me escapa una esquinita, tal vez fuera de mi alcance tras una anémona que no quiero molestar, o cubierta de arena apilada por una cangrejita en su perenne afán de construirse escondites. Y luego, cualquier cosa que quiero mirar parece estar protegida atrás de esa esquina olvidada.

Estaba observando un gusano gordo y brilloso que se tragaba unas bolitas de camarón, esperando a que se acercara para que le sacara una foto, lo que nunca hizo, y lo dejé para tomar una foto de una lapa, que sí se presentaba a la vista. Pero, por cierto, en esa esquina llena de algas.

Casi siempre borro estas fotos, si es que no se pueden limpiar. Pero me quedé con esta, tal como está. La lapa está comiendo el alga; por eso se metió allí.

Hay por lo menos tres especies de alga que crecen aquí. En primer lugar, todas esas manchas cafés. Estas crecen rapidamente; dentro de una semana, cubrirán todas las paredes del tanque. Hay varias especies de alga que crecen como puntitos microscópicos, entre ellas, esas manchas.

Y luego hay unas hojitas de alga de un verde más vivo; parecen ser plantitas de lechuga marina, Ulva sp.

Y los puntitos rojos: varias especies de alga roja hacen el ciclo de vida en dos etapas. La toallita turka, Mastocarpus sp., por ejemplo, es una costra en la primera generación, y en la siguiente crece como una hoja grande con protuberancias, algo así como una toalla. Estas manchitas rojas en el tanque bien pueden ser la toallita turka. También se han metido a la bomba de agua, y son muy difíciles de quitar.

La lapa no es la única que está comiendo algas; los puntitos blancos probablemente serán copépodos. Hay uno más grande dentro de la concha de la lapa, meneando la cola. ¡Buen provecho!

As the tide comes in

I returned to the new stretch of beach I'd found. The tide was coming in, and on this flat beach, it was in a hurry. I watched as the water reached pinkish blobs, which immediately opened up to become anemones.  Tiny sleeping snails turned out to be mainly scurrying hermit crab youngsters.

Random shot of the base rock, with stones and "snails".

... which became hermit crabs. Here's one, under the first inch of water.

Mini-hermie. With palm ridges for size comparison.

Much of the shoreline here is covered with a short, hard, almost black seaweed. Black, that is, while it is dry. I stood on a stone to watch what happened when the first waves reached it.

Turkish washcloth, dry and stiff. There's a slight purplish tinge to it in direct sunlight.

The water rolled in. In a moment, the colour had changed from black to purple to a deep red wine colour.

Third wave on a tiny scrap of washcloth.

Second wave. The top parts of the seaweed have only been underwater for seconds.

I hadn't been paying attention; the water had reached my shoes, supposedly planted on a higher stone, and was threatening to pour into the tops. I hopped, skipped, splashed back to dry beach, and went to examine the upper tide level instead.

Tarry confusion

Just below the upper tidal limit, the rocks often are slippery, covered with a blackish, tarry, oily-looking crust, treacherous to step on, unappealing to touch. It's worth stopping to look at it, though: it had scientists stumped for years, not knowing what it was.

Turkish washcloth, Petrocelis phase.

More Turkish washcloth, Mastocarpus papillatus

The crusts are about 1/4 inch thick, well glued down; they don't scrape off or stick to curious fingers. Dry, they're almost black, but otherwise they are usually a dark, bluish red. They grow around, not over barnacles. (Something in the barnacle chemistry that they don't like, maybe?)

In older books, they're assigned to the genus, Petrocelis. Eventually, they were discovered to be a phase in the life cycle of Turkish washcloth seaweeds.

The most confusing stage is the tetrapsorophyte, once thought to be a different alga altogether.  It is encrusting and looks like a patch of soft tar on a rock.  Once the life cycle was figured out the species became known as Mastocarpus papillatus.  However, common synonyms still exist such as Gigartina papillata.(*) (Joe Lutz)

Either Turkish towel or Turkish washcloth. The towel is much larger, but otherwise similar. The bumps are reproductive structures, which give rise to the crustal phase.

I've been calling all the Turkish variants "towels", but they are distinct species. I Googled them for a bit of clarity, and got more confused; not only are the names changing, but even the number of species is in the process of being sorted out. And there are other seaweeds that have a crust phase, as well, difficult to distinguish on the beach. So for now, I'll stick to towels (big) and washcloths (small).

Another crust, with small patch of another seaweed, possibly Endocladia muricata. (I could be wrong. Easily.)

It commonly forms the top-most conspicuous band of seaweed along that coast. (Central California) E. muricata often grows with Pelvetiopsis limitata (dwarf rockweed) and Mastocarpus papillatus (Turkish washcloth), on rocks in the high intertidal. (Wikipedia)

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 

(Shakespeare -Hamlet (1.5.167-8)

*Kozloff, 1973, was still calling the washcloth Gigartina, but recognizes the crust as a stage in its life cycle.