Shapes in the murk

Cloud cover: 100%. So reads the weather report for most days recently. 98 to 100%. And we have barely 8 hours of daylight, but for the first and last of those hours it's too dark to read outside. Even when it isn't raining.

I'm not grumbling; that's our end of the year island weather; those misty days, the days of muted greys, of hillsides that blend into the sky, of tree silhouettes and the cries of gulls made musical in the damp air.

It wasn't raining, and there was no breeze to ruffle the water, so I went down to the docks to peer under the floats. Dock fouling, they call it; looking at the life that "fouls" the human structures. A one-sided way to look at it; don't our plastics and oils and trash contaminate the habitat of all that underwater life?

Anyhow. It was too dark, even at midday, to see much underwater. I saw orange starfish down on the rocks and many feather duster worms on the underside of the floats, all vague shapes in the murk. But there were bright white plumose anemones just under the surface.

Metridium senile, on an underwater hose. The seaweed is a blur in the dark water.

Many of the old pilings have been replaced by metal ones. I'm not sure why, but so far, even the algae have left them bare. But some of the wooden ones remain; here I found good-sized kelp crabs.

Creosoted piling, with barnacles and a leggy kelp crab, waving his chelipeds at me.

Armed and dangerous. Or so he wants me to believe. Lots of barnacles on this piling.

Another plumose anemone.

And another. The netting can be seen, faintly, through the flesh of the anemone.

This was very dark, and I had to jack up the lighting. The feather duster worm, to my eyes, looked dark purple. The sponge looked dull orange.

I kept that photo because of the leggy critters that crawl on the pipes. They look to me like skeleton shrimps; I haven't seen these under the docks before.

Skeleton shrimp, in my aquarium, 2015. Male (large) and pregnant female.

As I headed back to dry land, the sun was attempting to break through the clouds.

As bright as it got. This was at  3 PM.

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Nubosidad: 100%. Así dice el pronóstico meteorológico para casi todos los dias ahora. De 98 a 100%. Y nos quedan ahora apenas 8 horas de luz a diario, pero en la primera y última de esas horas, sigue tan oscuro que no se puede leer afuera. Y eso, cuando no llueve.

No es una queja; así es nuestro clima aquí en la isla hacia el final del año; esos dias de neblina, de los tonos grises apagados, de cerros que se desvanecen entre las nubes, de siluetas de los árboles y de los gritos de las gaviotas que se vuelven música por la humedad del aire.

No llovía, y no había brisa para levantar olas; fui al muelle para ver que se podía encontrar bajo los flotadores. Pero estaba bastante oscuro, aunque era todavía media tarde. Vi estrellas de mar en las rocas debajo del agua, y muchos gusanos plumero, pero todos como formas imprecisas entre las sombras. Pero sí había anémonas blancas justo debajo de la superficie.

    1. Metridium senile en un tubo. Las algas, sin luz, se borran y pierden sus colores.

Muchos de los pilotes viejos se han cambiado por pilotes de metal. No sé porque, pero hasta ahora  ni siquiera las algas se han establecido en ellos. Pero todavía hay algunos de los pilotes de madera; aquí encontré cangrejos kelp bastante grandecitos.

    2. Pilote pintado con creosota, con bálanos y un cangrejo kelp, amenazándome con sus quelípedos.

    3. Peligroso. Por lo menos, eso es lo que quiere hacerme creer.

    4. Otra anémona plumosa Metridium senile.

    5. Y otra. Se ve la red através de su carne translúcida.

    6. Este gusano plumero estaba en un sitio muy oscuro, y tuve que aumentar la luz de la foto. En el sitio, se veía de un color morado muy apagado, y la esponja, que aquí se ve amarillo estaba más bien un café algo anaranjado.

Subí la foto a causa de esos animalitos patilargos que se ven en la tubería. Parecen ser Caprellidae (que aquí llamamos camarones esqueleto, y no son ni camarones ni esqueletos).  No he visto estos antes en los flotadores, solamente en algas intermareales.

    7. Una pareja de caprellidae en mi acuario, 2015. El grande es el macho.

    8. Mientras regresaba a tierra firma, el sol trataba de penetrar las nubes, pero pronto volvió a esconderse. Esto fue a las 3 de la tarde.

Ride 'em, cowshrimp!

And here's yesterday's skeleton shrimp, riding the currents and hoping to catch a juicy copepod.

It was my birthday today, and I've had company, including a beautiful 6-year-old boy who helped me empty the tank and do inventory. He even managed to catch a shrimp in his hand, without hurting it!

And now I'm tired and feeling every single one of my mumblety years; I'm going to bed.

Pink algae, tomorrow.

Almost a cartoon

I've been working on photos of a delicate pink algae, but it's infested with bouncy skeleton shrimp. This couple made me laugh.

Six-legged bully

I try not to anthropomorphize my critters, to remember that they have their own lives that don't necessarily mesh with ours. But sometimes the temptation is strong. I know the face on that poor victim is just a fluke of camera angles; she* doesn't really have a down-turned mouth and a pug nose. She's not really going to be forced to hand over her lunch money. It just looks that way.

But some things are almost universal, among humans, animals, and even plants: the struggle for place, for food, for sex or its equivalent. And these skeleton shrimp are fighters; they cross paths often, and when they do, they hit and bite at each other. Usually it ends quickly, as the smaller one backs away.

A few seconds later; fight ended, all is forgiven and forgotten.

These tiny beasties are usually standing upright on swaying seaweeds. Nothing seems to dislodge them, even when I pick up a handful of algae and swish it around in the water to shake out any muck or unsuspected hitchhikers. When I drop the algae back in the tank, there are all the skeleton shrimp, standing tall, as if nothing had happened.

When they move from one branch of seaweed to another, or travel down a blade of eelgrass, they bend over, grasp the path ahead with their big, hooked "hands" (gnathopods), then bring up the back legs, the way an inchworm moves. But as soon as they've reached their destination, they stand up again.

Those six prehensile legs explain how they maintain their footing.

*She's carrying young; see her swollen brood pouch? The larger one is probably a male.

Of feather dusters and their fashion choices.

The tide was about a quarter of the way out at Boundary Bay a few days ago; good for a daytime tide this time of year. (It will be nice and low next week, but around 11:00 PM, too late, too cold, too dark for beachcombing.)

I was looking for goodies to take home to my hermits; the winter haul, up near the shore, is usually mostly torn eelgrass, with a few shreds of sea lettuce. This time, they were lucky. The eelgrass was plentiful and whole, with roots;  the sea lettuce came in big sheets. And we found a couple of full-size blades of Turkish towel.

The critters are happy now, climbing all over their green and red jungle gym, swinging in the current, nibbling at fluff on the limpets.

I shook out the eelgrass and sea lettuce before I bagged it up, but it still came home with passengers: 9 hermits, umpteen limpets, 5 green flatworms, several scaleworms and many small green ribbon worms. And a dance troupe of skeleton shrimp, which I've been trying to take photos of without disturbing them; they are so fragile!

A couple of smaller worms turned up in the water I'd washed the seaweeds in:

Feather-duster worm.

The bowl it's in is 2 cm. across, so this worm is about 3 cm. long. When I caught it, it was bare, but as soon as it touched a bit of sand it knitted itself a scarf.

Not a bit shy, even when I brushed some of its sand away; it still kept fanning the water, feeding.

The second worm, a bit smaller, showing the pointed tail. This one wears a sand collar, too.

When I dropped these in the tank, they quickly buried themselves up to the neck in the sand, leaving only the feathery top visible.

I found a few of these back in August, 2010. One was much redder than these, but otherwise the same. Some of these feather-duster worms have eyes on the tentacles, up to 1000 pairs of eyes; I couldn't see any here, unless those white spots on the back of the tentacles in the first photo are eyespots. In one of my other photos, the same spots show up looking greenish.

Skeletons on a root trapeze. Skeleton shrimp, that is.

Last week, we found the tide 'way out at Centennial Beach, and walked almost to the water's edge. Out there, I picked up a tangle of eelgrass and roots to inspect at home, looking for critters attached to the leaves and roots. Amphipods, of course; snails maybe, worms. And maybe an isopod or an anemone.

At home, I dumped the lot into a bowl of seawater, removed the live eelgrass, and left the broken roots for later. When I went back to them, I saw movement in the water. Something tiny, vibrating, attached to all the roots. Here they are:

Skeleton shrimp, Caprellids

I had read about these; I never expected to see any. I find them fascinating, and I'll be looking for another batch next low tide.

There is more info on Caprellids, and clear photos,  at the Monterey Bay Aquarium site, on Intertidal MarineInvertebrates of the South Puget Sound, and at RaceRocks; Wikpedia has a brief note. And there's a whole page of photos in the Starfish collection.

I was so tired by the time I was done, what with Picasa scrambling the almost-finished video, so that I had to start from scratch, that I misspelled my own name at the end! And I identified the skeleton shrimp as Caprella equilibra, following Kozloff's diagram, but later I realized they could also be Caprella laeviuscula, which is also common here (Map). (And looks about the same to me.) And I think that the brood chamber is one, made of two leaves. but I'm not going to re-do the whole thing again. Not now, at least.