Tailed jellies

 The last of the under-the-wharf pics:

Part sun, part deep shade. Another plumose anemone, a bunch of algae and hydroids, more tunicates, and floating jellies.

These jellies were tiny; an inch across or so. Most of the jellyfish I see around the wharfs are larger, mostly moon jellies, Aurelia labiata, or water jellies, Aequorea spp. Some of these may be water jellies; they're too small and too indistinct to be sure.

But others seem different: 

Three species of jellyfish?

One looks like a cross jellyfish, Mitrocoma cellularia; one could possibly be a red-eye medusa, Polyorchis penicillatus, and could those tailed jellies possibly be sea gooseberries?

There's always something new.

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Estas son las últimas de las fotos de las criaturas debajo del muelle.

Hay otra de las anémonas emplumadas, muchas algas e hidroides, otro grupo de tunicados. Y medusas flotando en el agua, todas muy chiquitas.

Las medusas que comunmente veo por aquí son las medusas "luna", y las "de agua". Pero son más grandes; estas miden 1 o 2 centímetros, por mucho.

Unas parecen medusas "cruzadas", una puede ser la medusa con ojos rojos (y sí, he visto estos ojitos) y tal vez, posiblemente, quizás, las que tienen las dos colas largas pueden ser Pleurobrachia bachei, que no es una medusa, sino un ctenóforo.

Siempre hay algo nuevo.

Holding on

 How do sea urchins hang on upside-down on the bottom of floats?

Green sea urchins, Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis, on the underside of a float.

It always looks impossible; those spines don't stick to anything. But I've watched them in my aquarium; on the mouth side, which is the uppermost side in this photo, in among the spines, they have thin tube feet. The tubes, with a suction cup on the end, can extend beyond the spines; with them, they can walk about, just as a starfish does.

They use the feet to attach themselves to underwater structures, and also to capture food particles and move them towards the mouth.

Small sea urchin, in my tank, showing off its tube feet. Oct. 2019

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Los erizos de mar; ¿cómo es que se adhieren a la cara inferior de objetos en el agua? Las espinas que los cubren son redondeadas; no pueden agarrar nada.

Alrededor de la boca, tienen muchos "pies" en forma de tubo, llamados pies ambulacrales. Estos pueden extenderse fuera del alzanze de las espinas. En el extremo, tienen una ventosa que les permite caminar o adherirse, a la manera de las estrellas de mar. También pueden usar los pies para agarrar pequeños objetos flotantes y llevarlos hacia la boca.

Crowned fisherfolk

Worms. It's too general a word, covering everything from a common garden earthworm to a variety of parasites, to flatworms and ribbon worms and scaleworms; to hunters and builders and diggers and tentacled fisherfolk.

The feather duster worms are polychaete worms, segmented worms (like earthworms) but with bristly paddles extending from each segment. They build long tubes to live in, rubbery tubes. (Other polychaete tubeworms make calcareous tubes.) And they have a crown, a bilobed cluster of feathery radioles that opens up at the mouth of the tube, and may have up to several hundred pairs of these radioles. These capture floating particles, sorting them into food or construction material. Near the base of each radiole, they have an eye, a light-sensitive spot that enables them to detect movement nearby, and retract the crown into the tube. The crown may be almost any colour: red, blue, purple, green, tan, pink, orange; solid coloured or striped.

In an angle between two floats, these feather dusters spread their crowns out into the sunlight. In the shade, they all look blackish.

Assorted feather dusters, purple, mauve, tan, maroon. The spiky thing near the upper right is a sea urchin.

Other animals settle on the tubes. Here, tunicates, sponges, algae or hydroids.

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Los gusanos: la palabra abarca demasiados animales, desde la lombriz que vive entre las raices en nuestros jardines, hasta las orugas que se van a hacer mariposas, pasando por una gran variedad de anélidos, platelmintos, poliquetos, etcétera.

Los plumeros de mar son "gusanos" marinos poliquetos; o sea, que están formados de una serie de segmentos, cada uno con par de "patas" o parápodos, estos cubiertos de setas. Se construyen largos tubos flexibles, como de hule. (Otros poliquetos que viven en tubos los hacen a base de carbonato de calcio.) Y llevan una corona, un plumero con radioles (como tentáculos cada uno con sus ramitas). Estos radioles capturan partículas flotantes, dirigiéndolas al uso apropriado, sea comida o material de construcción. Y cerca de la base de cada radiole, tienen un ojito que puede distinguir cambios en el nivel de luz y advertir al plumero a tiempo de esconderse dentro del tubo. Las coronas pueden venir en una gran variedad de colores: morado, azul, rojo, cafe, crema, color de rosa, verde: de un color sólido o con rayas o espirales.

Estos estaban en un ángulo entre dos flotadores, donde les pegaba el sol. En la sombra se ven casi negros.

Otros animalitos se congregan en los tubos: aquí hay tunicados, esponjas, y algas o tal vez hidroides.

Jarritos

 There's always something new ...

Transparent tunicates. With their shadows.

In a corner between three floats, a stray ray of sunlight caught a group of whitish blobs, visible only from one awkward angle.

They looked like lightbulbs to me. The rope on the left is probably about an inch or a bit less across, so the largest of these bulbs would be two and a bit inches long.

There's a local solitary tunicate that looks like these, the Lightbulb tunicate, Clavelina huntsmani, but it has two very visible "filaments". The Transparent tunicate, Corella willmeriana, is slightly larger than the Lightbulb, and is mostly translucent, with a visible gut on one side. I found photos of these in two websites, one taken here in Campbell River, the other just across the channel on Quadra Island. There's another, very similar tunicate, an invasive, Ciona savignyi but it is much larger. It has showed up just across the border; I don't know if it has arrived here yet.

It's hard to see clearly, but I think this one is the Transparent.

A solitary tunicate is like a little jug, with two openings, an intake and an outflow tube. It attaches itself to a solid substrate at the base.

The structure of a solitary tunicate. Image: Washington U.

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En una esquina entre tres flotadores, encontré estos animalitos, que parecen un foco. El cordón a la izquierda mide tal vez una pulgada de diámetro, lo que hace que el más grande de estos animales medirá aproximadamente 2 pulgadas de largo.

Son urocordados, también conocidos como tunicados, y solitarios; muchos de los urocordados viven en colonia; estos se juntan pero cada uno por separado.

Hay tres especies de tunicados como este que viven en nuestras aguas; el "Foco", el Transparente, y un invasivo, que es más grande. El "Foco" tiene dos lineas en  el interior, como los filamentos de un foco a la antigua.

Creo que estos son el tunicado Transparente, Corella willmeriana. Encontré fotos de estos tomados aquí en Campbell River, y al otro lado del estrecho, en la isla Quadra.

Un tunicado solitario tiene la forma de un jarrito, con dos aperturas, por las que fluye el agua. Se fija por su base en un sustrato sólido.

Under the water line

 The wharf, on the sunny side, is a quiet place, a watery parking lot. There are a few people, gulls, a dog or two, maybe even a cat. Sometimes a heron.

But on the underside; that's another story. There's more busy and crowded biodiversity there than in the entire city of Ankh-Morpork*.

Plumose anemones, sponges and much more, on the side of a float.

At first glance, this is a mess. Too much going on; too crowded, too many shapes. So I've added labels to the photo. It might be a good idea to click on it to bring it up to full size.

There's even a nudibranch!

Another anemone, same species, with friends.

And here it is, with labels. Help me out here!

And another photo, from a wharf edge in full sun:

A few barnacles grow above the water line, in the splash zone.

And here it is, labelled:

The worms like the dark better.

Summing up: there are anemones, sponges, tunicates, barnacles and mussels and limpets, assorted feather duster worms, at least one nudibranch, a sea urchin, hydroids, assorted algae. Present, but not visible, are a full contingent of amphipods, copepods, assorted worms out of tubes, assorted worms in tubes, snails, bryozoans, probably some isopods, maybe a few shrimp. The usual crabs are not the one here, which I think, seeing only the underside, is probably a shore crab; the usual crabs are kelp crabs, longer-legged for crawling on floaters, and an olive-green colour which makes them hard to see. 

But there is still more! I'll upload a few more photos tomorrow.

*Which includes trolls, dwarfs, golems, werewolves, vampires, banshees, gnolls, gnomes, Wee Free Men, zombies, talking dogs, ditto ravens, gargoyles, elves, goblins, orcs, Death, incarnated auditors, the 5 horsemen, bogeymen, and humans, just taking into account the "intelligent" (although not necessarily wise) species. And not counting the yeti, who is wise enough to stay up in the snows.

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En el muelle, todo es tranquilo; al fin es un estacionamiento, aunque sea sobre agua. Hay algunas personas, gaviotas, uno que otro perro, tal vez hasta un gatito. Y a veces una garza.

Abajo del agua, ya es otra cosa. Hay un ecosistema tan diverso, tan lleno, que es difícil verlo o describirlo.

En estas fotos, tomadas al lado de dos flotadores, hay: anémonas, esponjas, un nudibranquio, cientos (aunque solo se ven algunos) de anélidos, uricordados (tunicados), lapas, mejillones, cirrípedos, hidroides, y un cangrejo. Y muchas algas, rojas y verdes, que se intermezclan con los anélidos que viven en tubos y, abiertos, se confunden con los hilitos de alga.

Hay mas animales aquí que no se pueden ver, pero por cierto están escondidos bajo el alga: anfipodos, copepodos, más anélidos, briozoos, caracoles, probablemente unos isopodos, y camarones. Los cangrejos que veo a seguido no son como el que aparece en la foto, un cangrejo que más bien se halla entre las piedras en la playa, pero un cangrejo "kelp" que tiene las patas larguísimas para mejor agarrarse a los flotadores, y de un color verde oliva, que lo hace muy difícil de ver entre el alga.

¡Hay más! Subo más fotos mañana.

Blue, white, yellow

 Back to the wharf: first, the view from above the water line.

Reflections with yellow skiff.

And tomorrow, I'll move to the underside of those floats.

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Regresando al muelle; primero, una vista al aire. Mañana paso a mirar abajo de los flotadores.

Rainy evening

I had been intending to go down to the docks to look for the diving ducks that fish these waters, but was delayed running errands, and here it was, past 5. And the sun sets at 4:30 these days; it was getting dark, and pouring rain to boot.

But the camera was waiting in the car, and my jacket was already wet; why waste an outing? I got the camera into its rain gear, and went down to the boats.

At the bottom of the ramp, a dead harbour seal was floating, half out of the water.

A sad picture, but the spotted hide is interesting.

The head seems to be intact, but skin was sloughing off the back feet already. The creamy line across the centre back seems to be a cut. He may have been in an accident with one of the boats.

Maybe someone ignored this sign. Photo taken with flash, which reflected off the falling rain to make that paler circle of blue. The house is one of the harbour buildings, out on a pier.

Warm light reflecting off ridges on the ramp, and, directly under the light, off raindrops slanting down.

Just lights, warm and cool, on the water.

There was one bird; a great blue heron, looking miserable in the rain. I lightened the photo up quite a bit; he was barely visible.

I went back to the car, got the camera out of its rain gear, changed the settings to cope with the fading light, suited it up again, and went out, to discover the heron just flying away, a dark, wide-winged shadow flitting behind the masts of the boats.

And here are the boats, with all the little lights and someone's bright yellow rain gear.

The darkness and rain blurs out distances, so that the masts and equipment blend in with the traffic lights beyond, the fish and chip shop across the street, and even the houses in the next block above.  In spite of the dark and the wet, it felt cosy, somehow; as if the people in all those little pockets of warmth and light were connected by a common thread; the hour maybe, the time to finish off today's work, and get a hot meal on the table.

And I went home, dried off the camera, hung my jacket to drip over the tub, and cooked up a batch of chicken and mushroom soup.

Deep blues

Trying my hand at a panorama shot:

Docks at Campbell River, on a sunny day last week. Half a dozen photos stitched together.

Another sunny day, more or less the same boats, different perspective.

Down payment

There are more things in heaven and earth under the wharf, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

With apologies to Wm. Shakespeare (Hamlet Act 1, scene 5)

I looked at one of the under-the-wharf photos, and was lost. Herring can wait! I've got critters to identify, or to wish I could identify. Here's the first of the lot, and the easiest to recognize.

Three plumose anenomes, a bit of sea lettuce, some purply, tentacled gift-wrap ribbon, other stuff, worms, maybe.

But what is that pink, five-armed, blobby thing in the middle? It doesn't look like a starfish. Or does it?

This was taken down the crack between two wharf segments, with the sunlight illuminating the water beneath, and glancing down at an angle from above. The blue at the bottom is wharf paint.

Now, back to work: I've got some strange beasties to identify.

Why sorting photos takes forever

Day Two, continued: Powell River wharf.

(This post is participating in a Pacific NorthWest scavenger hunt today. Details and links on Patricia Lichen's blog.)

The first time I saw the splotches on my underwater photos, I thought I had dirt on the lens. I wiped it (smearing the oil slick around a bit), took more photos of the same area, and the screen showed me even more spots. Dirt in the water, I figured; caught by the flash.

Spots, ruining a photo of  anemones and mussels on a pipe. (I increased the contrast and de-saturated the colours a bit, to make them easier to see.)

But why are all those dirt specks so perfectly round? Click on the photo to get the full impact; they go on and on into the background.

It wasn't until I was inspecting a photo at home, wondering if it was salvageable, that I saw a pattern in one:

A cross jellyfish, almost completely transparent. I highlighted it. .

Looking back at the previous photos, now I recognize the hints of structure in what looked, on site, like clear water. At least some of the photos may have captured jellyfish.

But we had seen none floating near the surface; last year, there were quite a few, close enough to photograph with the above-water cameras. I dug up the old photos and inspected the under-the-dock ones.*

A large anemone, and some small jellies. One, beside the stalk, looks like a moon jelly. Taken without flash.

I thought, then, that maybe most of the other circles, the ones without crosses, could also be jellies, like some we photographed last year. They showed a distinct centre circle, then a rayed "doughnut" around them, like the Aequorea species. I wrote the post up this way, then Tim came along to correct me. He said dust caught in the flash made those circular shapes, too.

Yes, but ... on some the rays were too evident to be an illusion. Or were they? I mulled it over, then tried an experiment. I filled a large black bucket with water from the tap. I didn't wash the bucket first, so it was dusty. I added a white kitchen utensil for a focal point, dunked the camera, and took a few photos.

And the "jellies" turned up there, too! So much for that. Some of the circles had the same rayed doughnut shape. None had the cross on the top, so at least those were probably really jellies.

Sample section from bucket photo.

These next photos were taken last year, with the dry-land camera. They were swimming just under the surface, in full sunlight. The water was clear, but there was a sprinkling of dust over the surface.

The cross jelly, Mitrocoma cellularia, swimming on its side. The mouth is that heart-shaped dark spot on the top of the inner surface. The band around the bottom is luminescent in darkness. It's about 4 inches across, full size for this species. (No flash on this, nor on the next two.)

A doughnut, one of the "water jellies", Aequorea spp. Look closely to see the trailing tentacles at the bottom.

Top view of a water jelly. Like the cross jelly, it is bioluminescent, giving out a green light when disturbed.

These two jellyfish are leptomedusas. ("Lepto-" means "flat"; the bell is wider than it is deep.) They spend part of their life as hydroids, fixed to a solid surface. The jelly, or medusa, is the adult stage. They reproduce by spawning eggs or sperm freely into the water; once the egg is fertilized, it sinks to the bottom and grows a new hydroid. In this stage, it is a colonial animal, where each member has its own function. Some bud; the buds sometimes develop into new medusae. When they are ready, they break off and swim away.

Anemones, June 2010. Flash used.

*How to get an underwater shot with a dry-land camera: worm yourself into a position close to the water surface and completely in shadow. Arrange it so that there is more light on your subject than on the water surface. Aim from a low angle to the surface. Don't use the flash. Don't fall in, either.

Day Two; a complete loss of dignity

The weather was perfect, again. The sky was clear, the water at the Powell River marina glassy smooth, in deep, deep blues, the boats sleek and dazzling white in the sunshine. Beautiful, but our attention was focused downwards, in the shadow of the planks of the wharf. There, the clean lines gave way to straggly algae, dead weeds and oily scum.

Brand-new planking, grungy attachments, some alive, some dead.

Something slimy and bubbly, long fibrous growths (possibly colonies of diatoms), dust, and oil sheen.

Some of this fringe would be alive, and probably host to many tiny animals. I might have pulled some up to look at it more closely, except that the surface was oily. Later, dunking my little underwater camera, I discovered that it was sticky, too; I had to rub hard at the screen in between shots to be able to see it, and my hands ended up all gunky, so that I gummed up the other camera, too.

Still, it would have been interesting to see what's living there. Next time, I'll be more prepared. Gloves and bags and more cleaning rags will be in my kit.

Our destination points were the wells where the pilings anchor the floating dock.

Four barnacled pilings: what is under there?

 This is a difficult spot for photography; the water is about two feet below us, there are spots of deep shadow and stripes of bright sunlight. The oily, dirty water surface reflects the flash, making it unusable. I was glad I had remembered the little underwater camera.

Around the pilings, feeding on the seaweeds, were many small fish; perch and rockfish and others, unidentifiable in the shadows. Most stayed down near the bottom, but there were always a few nibbling at the barnacles near the surface.

There's something big down there, but I can't see it clearly. Higher up, the lumps are purple starfish.

On the underside, and sometimes the sides, of the big supporting beams, the big anemones grow. Last year, they were all opened up, brown and pink and white tentacles waving. This year, most were closed down.

Mostly anemones, mostly sleeping. That white bit of fuzz may be a worm, or a small anemone. The red fan in the background is a worm. Laurie climbed on a pile of rope, and dangled himself down precariously into the well to get this shot.

I have discovered, watching the one large anemone (plumose anemone, like these above) in my aquarium, that it is extremely sensitive to temperature. One or two degrees extra is all that it takes to make it shut itself down to a tiny, flattish, brown lump. I add ice to the tank, and soon the stalk swells upwards and the mouth opens wide. (The smaller anemones, the striped green anemone (the tentacles are cream), are much more tolerant; they feed while their big cousin is sulking.) I wonder what the water temperature was, and what is normal for that dock area.

Large anemone, closed down almost completely, but with an open mouth.

We were disappointed, not finding the photogenic anemones from last year, but we persisted taking photos, almost at random, since we could barely see what we were doing. I held the underwater camera at arm's length, facing this way, then that; I couldn't see the screen from above, but I held the button down halfway for a few seconds, then clicked. The flash went off, I pulled up the camera and looked at the (oily) screen; it worked! I got a fish! So I tried again, and again. Most of the photos were duds. But a few held wonders.

Unhappy anemones, tiny stuff, and a pair of red calcareous tubeworms, one feeding.

The mouth of a tubeworm. Disturbed, it pulls back inside and slams its red trapdoor (operculum). The cauliflower-like structure at upper right is a half-contracted anemone. This species is lobed; each lobe makes a "floret" here.

Dwarf calcareous tubeworms, like tiny, white macaroni stuffed with orange feathers. I think I saw a flatworm somewhere in there, too.

I don't know what these are. They look rather like scallops covered with algae.

Barnacles on a piling. I have seen this before, but never managed a photo: if the light is right, the open mouths show a bright red interior, probably due to their hemoglobin. 

At the end of the float, under the ramps (new and old), Laurie and I sprawl on our bellies, peering down at anemones on a pipe.

What else we saw, I'll show you on Saturday. Meanwhile, on to another town's beach, tomorrow.

Sunshine Coast, Day Two. Powell River wharf

Small fish:

Flat fish:

Yellow fish:

Not a fish:

Very messy crab, under Powell River wharf. I think it may be a  large kelp crab.

I've been sorting the underwater photos, and finding much more in them than I expected. Full story tomorrow.