Seen too late

On the wide, flat sands of Boundary Bay, residents park their boats helter-skelter, tying them to a variety of home-made anchor points. There is no need for a wharf; some people just wade ashore from a close tie-up, others, anchored farther out, use paddle-boards or small skiffs to reach their boat when the tide is in. The sand is dotted with these contraptions, sometimes a chain attached to something deep in the sand, or an old rope tied to a bucket of cement.

Each of these creates its own mini-environment, catching floating seaweeds or logs, providing holes and crevices for a variety of intertidal critters, and a solid substrate for barnacles and mussels. Sand flows around them as the tide comes and goes, making hills and valleys, semi-permanent tide-pools where a small fish can wait safely through the dry hours.

Walking on the sand at low tide, I veer from one anchor point to the next; no two alike, none uninhabited.

We stopped at this one yesterday:

A half-buried bucketload of cement, with rusted metal fittings, long turned into red stone, encrusted with barnacles and seaweeds.

The "face" of the bucket, with a small log and a deepish pool.

Both Laurie and I poked our cameras into those two holes; none of the photos were any good, but we did see what was inside. They are rusty metal tubes, probably where some sort of fixture to hold a boat was attached. The top one shelters several hermit crabs and snails; a small, green crab guards the door of the lower tube.

"You can't see me; I'm green, and I'm hiding under green seaweed!"*

*(That's assuming that a crab sees colours the same as we do, which is entirely unevidenced.)

On the downstream side of the bucket, the current has hollowed out a pool and a long, shallow valley, paving the valley with broken clamshells.

Refraction through a couple of inches of water.

And where the shells peter out, in a calm backwater, worms keep on feeding while the rest of the beach lies dormant.

These are the largest worm tubes I have seen on the beach, up to 3 inches tall, standing firm.

They remind me of tipsy pilings left behind when an old wharf is demolished. But these have neat holes in the top, and if you look closely at the right moment, transparent tentacles reaching out.

And look again! See that whitish thing near the centre, that square with a tail? I didn't, when I was taking the photos, and it turned up on a half dozen. So I missed out; must be more observant.

The Mud-flat Hooded Shrimp, Nebalia pugettensis!

I last saw one of these 4 years ago. And the one before that was another 4 years earlier (Two posts). They're probably plentiful on the beach, but they're usually burrowing in the muck. This may be a dead one, or a molt. The live one I found had blue eyes; the dead ones I'd seen earlier had red eyes.

If you look back at the first photo of the Nebalia, you might see the second one, down by the lower right hand corner, half-hidden behind a blade of eelgrass.

And here's another one:

Very hairy green crab, not bothering to hide. And just below the broken shell at upper left, another Nebalia.

This one has no colour left. It must be a molted carapace and legs.

I hope I don't have to wait another 4 years before I see my next mud shrimp.

Next: another bucket.

Creatures of the muck

It's why I love blogging; other bloggers are so helpful!

After a long day, I was dropping off to sleep at my desk, so I posted my photo of unidentified beasties, and went off to bed. In the morning, I found that Olivia and Tim had done my work for me: the critters are crab zoea! All I had to do was turn to the correct page in my textbook, and there they were. Thanks so much!

Every time we go to a beach bordering Boundary Bay, I collect a 2-litre pop bottle full of nice, clean, fresh, saltwater for the aquarium. I could mix up water and marine salt to the proper salinity, but that would come without the plankton that feeds the anemones and barnacles, and sometimes the crabs and hermits, too. (They love a nice, juicy amphipod, if they can get it.)

In the winter, this is a bit of a problem. In summer, I wade out, at least to knee deep, where the water flows clear. Not at this time of year; the water's just above freezing, and I like warm feet. At the shore line, specially at high tide, or this winter's high "low tides", the water is a thick soup, rich in rotting eelgrass and stirred up mud. So I bring home dark brown muck.

I could filter the water at home, but that would eliminate the plankton, too. (Boundary Bay mud is really fine stuff. I use a double coffee filter, and still some gets through.) So I strain out the big stuff, and let the rest settle overnight. When I pour it off, it leaves a residue that often, even to the naked eye, is hopping with life. This I examine under the lens, with a good light. There's no telling what amazing beasties will show up!

The last bottle of water had a dozen or so of these cute babies:

Crab zoea. Sort of look like birds, don't they?

They wiggled and jittered up and down in the water, mostly staying where the light was strongest. Even under the hand lens, they were hard to see; they looked like two-legged spiderlings. The microscope, at 40x, showed me the eyes, the long spine, the beak-like rostrum*, and the forked tail. *This is just barely visible on the middle baby.

(Yay! The little Sony accepts the homemade lens I used to use on my first camera; with it, I can get a photo almost as clear as what I saw under the 'scope. What fun!)

Drawing from MESA.

I was surprised by this; I didn't expect babies in the chill of mid-winter. Silly of me; a human notion that babies need warmth. I'm continually having to discard these un-examined "rules" for Ma Nature.

But that wasn't all to be found in my bit of sediment! There were a handful of egg-bearing copepods, of the kind that trails the eggs along in one clump at the rear. Most of the ones I see with eggs carry two egg bundles, off to the sides.

Image from here, by Carol E. Lee.

Then there was a baby shrimp, like the three I already have, but so small that under the lens, I could see only the eyes and a hint of transparent body. I didn't try to catch it for a macro; it looked far too fragile to be tampered with.

And this:

Unidentified. About 1 mm. long. Forked tail, two-tone carapace.

I couldn't determine what it is. Another copepod? An infant Nebalia? Maybe; the Nebalia pugettensis are common on this side of the bay.  I found a photo of a Cumella from Bellingham Bay, which seems to match, but I understood that these are more likely to be found in freshwater. Do you recognize it?

The shrimp, the mystery critter, and the copepods went into the tank; the shrimp may survive, but the copepods will soon be lunch. The crab zoea are being raised, at least for now, separately, out of reach of hungry anemone mouths.

Mud shrimp, crab and coconut

I'm getting 'way behind on what I want to blog about; I still have critters left over from our vacation, birds from Reifel Island, beetles and mites and a sad slug. I'm going to have to double up, or resign myself to be blogging the summer months while the snow falls in January. (If it does.)

And today, to top things off, I'm just going to tie up a couple of loose ends from previous posts, which doesn't get me any further ahead. Ah, well ...

1. Nebalia pugettensis, the "Blue-eyed beach critter". A couple of weeks ago, I posted two photos of the live nebalia, almost invisible in the water. This Sunday, I brought home a small handful of sea lettuce and eelgrass washed up with the tide, as a treat for the hermits and crabs in my aquarium. When I washed it, as I always do, a couple of almost transparent animals floated to the top, dead. I scooped them out, and left them in alcohol to preserve them. Yesterday, I dried them out and took their photos. They were no longer transparent:

Nebalia pugettensis, the Hooded mud shrimp.

These are the strangest of all the shrimpy, crabby animals on our shores, I think. They look like they're put together out of spare parts.

The "hood", or carapace, is not fused to the body like a crab's is, but loosely attached with a muscle. It has a long, sharp spine at the top back. And that thing is tough! I accidentally touched it with a finger, and it jabbed in like a cactus spine, and stuck. Another, shorter spine aims forward from the hinged cap between the eyes. This is not a beast to be tangled with; imagine being a fish who grabs for a nice mouthful and gets those spines, front and rear!

And the tail looks like it belongs to another animal altogether.

If the spines on the carapace are strong, the tail has to be different; it finishes off with a soft, feathery plume, extremely fragile.

And this one's eyes are neither red nor blue.

The other animal turned out to be a small helmet crab moult:

Both critters were about 9 mm. long (nebalia) or wide (crab).

2. The coconut. I washed it and dried it thoroughly. Tonight, we cracked it open. We got about a cup of clear coconut liquid; the meat was white and solid. But some sea water had seeped in between the shell and the meat; on the outside, it was covered with green slime that washed off easily.

The juice smells good, if slightly alcoholic. It reminds me of a tepachería in Coyoacán, Mexico, a place where they used to sell tepache and other mildly alcoholic fruit drinks; even across the plaza, the fruity, sweet, nutty aroma competed with the scent of flowers and fresh bread.

My kitchen, however, smells like a coconut-oil soap factory.

Laurie says the birds will like the meat. I know the squirrels will. I'm wondering about the juice. If I put it out for them, will they get drunk on it?

Blue-eyed beach critter

Nebalia pugettensis, aka "Sea flea" or "Mud flat hooded shrimp". (But neither a shrimp nor a flea.) A Leptostracan.

He's mostly transparent; the shadow is somehow more substantial than he is.

I found some of these, dead, at Boundary Bay four years ago. This is the first live one I've seen. It was in a shallow tide pool where I was unsuccessfully trying to catch a sculpin. This little critter waltzed right into my collecting jar, and came home with me.

I wrote about these long ago, here (Part II of Muddy Buddies) and here (Part III).

Nebalia as I saw it and drew it, having no camera in those days.

It was a little harder to see this one, as I had to manipulate it very carefully, and it kept hiding in the sand. I couldn't get a microscope on it without hurting it, or breaking those almost invisible legs and tail.

If you look very closely, you can almost see the pointed tail of the carapace.

The whole carapace is transparent. This includes a separate, pointed rostrum over the head, and the long spine at the back. All the colour comes from the body of the animal underneath.

And a strange thing; all my dead samples had ruby red eyes; this guy's eyes are blue.

Nebalia (Muddy Buddies, Part III)

This is Part II of a three-part series, reproduced from my old blog. (Here) Part I, Part II. (On this blog)

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Continued from Muddy Buddies, Part I and Part II , in which I told of the finding of this tiny crustacean.

To go on with the nature of the beast:-

This particular nebalia (pugettensis) has no fixed English name. Some call it a "sea flea", although what it has in common with fleas, I fail to see. Some Canadian sources call it the Mud Flat Hooded Shrimp, and this at least points us in the general direction. But it is not a shrimp, nor exclusive to mud flats, nor is that "rostrum" a hood; it's more like a rhino's horn.

One thing, though; nebalia loves mud. It lives around the world in muddy bottoms, from tidal flats to "abyssal" depths, "abyssal" referring to 2000 to 5000 metres underwater. The pressure down there, at the 5000 metre level, is 500 atmospheres, or 750 lbs per square inch. Amazing versatility!

We found them in Boundary Bay, because the sand is half mud; the other end of the beach is all sticky, impassible, stinking mud, and just across the water is Mud Bay. I've half a mind to go over there and dig for live nebalia. Nebalia loves mud, shallow or deep.

Eugene Kozloff , in Seashore Life, says, "The situations where it is plentiful generally show signs of being quite foul when they are stirred up." (p.241) That would describe the area perfectly.

And down there in the muck, they stir up the water, streaming it through the carapace, filtering out edible bits of organic matter, plant or animal. They are scavengers, too; they have been caught in traps baited with dead crabs, several days old. Part of the clean-up crew, all those billions of tiny unsung heroes filtering our water, carting away our leavings.

And yet, they are so beautiful! So clean looking; that glistening, glassy carapace, that polished horn. So delicate; the flowing, feathery tail. And those ruby-red eyes!

What are they seeing, down there, deep, deep down in the mud and slime, with those brilliant eyes of theirs?

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So: thanks to Bev, again, for her lessons in photography. Which I can benefit from, even though my camera is the beginners' model. Maybe some day ...

Nebalia (Muddy Buddies, Part II)

This is Part II of a three-part series, reproduced from my old blog. (Here) Part I, Part III.

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Continued from Muddy Buddies, Part I , in which I recounted the discovery of some unknown (to me) sea creatures.

At home, I dug out my supplies: water to wash the sand off my finds, a good magnifying glass, my hand microscope (up to a power of 40x), a small paintbrush for manipulating delicate tentacled objects, a bright lamp. And a stack of books.

First; a birds-eye view. Length; about 1/4 inch, counting the tail structure. Two very prominent red eyes; the most arresting feature. Colour: once cleaned, almost transparent, with a creamy tinge and darker central section. Legs to the sides, two hooked tentacles, grippers or something in front. And a prominent tail, about half the length of the entire creature, curving downwards.

With the magnifying lens, the tail seemed to be segmented, and the front had some sort of a pointy beak; there was a similar pointy structure at the end of what looked like a shell, above the tail. A shell means a crustacean. I turned to my books.

The creature as I saw it and drew it, having no camera.

In Seashore Life of Puget Sound, (etc.) , I found it. Page 241, three whole paragraphs and a photo. My beastie now has a name; Nebalia pugettensis, belonging to an order called the Leptostraca. (Lepto=thin, straca=shell.) No English name. The shell is called a carapace, like the shell of a turtle. That little beak thingy is called a rostrum. (Hey, I thought that was a stand for the speaker at a convention! The dictionary tells me it can also be an elongated beak. Well, ok, if you say so.)

A photo from the web, but a different species, nebalia bipes.
A website mentioned feathery feet. Time to open up the microscope. The nice thing about the hand microscope is that I can look at things in situ. I'm glad I did, this time. On the piece of paper towel where my nebalia were drying, I could see, at full power (40x) long, ostrich-feather plumes at the end of the tail, almost transparent. But so delicate! When I moved the nebalia to a better viewing base (a white plastic lid), using the tip of the paintbrush at the thick of the thorax as a lift, and looked again, the delicate fronds were broken off, leaving ragged stumps.

Now I could see that the carapace and rostrum, and a long point over the tail, are transparent. The colour comes from the pale legs and thorax underneath. 4 legs on either side, with another thing that could be a leg or an antenna; my samples were dead and curled up, making it hard to distinguish them. Two more pointy things at the front. The tail was definitely segmented, looking like a telescoping leg of a camera stand. Two little vanes at the end of the tail, and the sad remains of feathers.

And the eyes! Big, round, and deep, deep red. And segmented, beautifully regular honeycombed sections, each one an individual eye, no doubt . Enlarged and somehow hardened, they would make nice jewels for a ring or necklace.

Next: what were these guys doing on that beach? I'll leave that for the next post.

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Next post: Muddy Buddies, Part III

Experimenting with lenses, and nebalia

Yesterday, reading Bev's blog entry on camera techniques (loved that spider portrait how-to!), I remembered a trick I had read about while I was still wishing for a digital. Something that just might possibly work with my economy model, with its 7-in limit on close-ups.

I dropped everything and dug out my fixings...

I have a good lens that I bought at Value Village for a buck. It seems that it is a part of a (missing) older slide projector. Solid, unscratched, and well-ground. I placed it in front of the lens on my camera (set for close-ups) and took a few trial shots. It seemed to work. So I dug out my four dried nebalia pugettensis from last June, and photographed them. Uploaded the photos to the computer, and looked at them. WoW! Better than I had ever hoped!

Here are the 4:


And here's one on his own:

OK: time to back-track to the story. I discovered these on the beach ...

No, not that way; I'll just post the three parts of the story as I wrote it on my old blog.

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Part I: "Muddy Buddies"

"This world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that, long ago. In my books, he has a point. But I doubt that he was referring to nebalia, which made me happy this weekend.

It was a bright, sunny day, and we were in Boundary Bay Park . So was half the population of Surrey, with their kites and kids, umbrellas and sunscreen. The tide was out; it looked like we could almost walk to Mud Bay, just beyond. And 'way out at the edge of the water there was a white line that, on examining it through the binoculars, looked like a seagull convention. We decided to walk out.

Mount Baker was ahead, seemingly floating on a haze of grey cloud; MN (Laurie) had to keep stopping to take photos. I was watching where I stepped. The sand was covered completely, carpeted so that it looked almost black, with small needle snails*. Looking closely, I could distinguish 4 different types; 3 smaller ones, up to about 1/2 inch long, one dark brown and two with spiralling bands of white and brown. And a larger snail, paler brown and over an inch long. I wished I could float, like Mount Baker, over the sand; I could hear the shells crunching under my sandals. Couldn't be helped.

It was a long walk. I picked up a crab shell or two, and discarded them when I found them broken. Other than that, there were just the snails for a while, then empty sand with an occasional open clam shell, seagull dinner. We reached the water's edge just in time for the seagulls to rise with a great clamour and move back, behind us. They knew something we didn't.

We turned back. I confess it was a bit of a letdown; there was nothing more to see at water's edge than there had been half-way back down the beach. MN found a seagull to photograph. I waited, walking slowly, looking at the sand.

Then I saw them. First, it was the dead crabs. Small crabs. Smaller than any I had seen, almost paper-thin and transparent. I bent and picked one up on a fingertip. And saw another, and another.

How do you collect delicate shells when you forgot to bring a container? MN was back from his photoshoot; he found me a medium-sized clamshell half full of sand. Perfect! I stored the crabs safely, went to look for another. And found something I had never seen before: a half-dozen or so of tiny golden animacules, half the size of the crabs, with a little tail the length of the body. Four of them went into the clamshell before we realized why the seagulls had left.

The tide was coming in. And the beach is so flat, it ran like a river. So did we.

Next: What are these beasties?

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*The snails were probably some variety of bittium.

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Part II in next post.