Friends in the drift

Whew!  We're finishing up field work soon, but after a quick lunch along San Diego Bay today we found a large piece of Giant Kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) washed up along the shoreline and noticed a couple of nice invertebrates on the drift kelp:

 

 

Proliferating Sea Anemone (Epiactis prolifera) — a beautiful orange individual with many juveniles visible around her column. 

 

 

 

 

The "disappearing" nudibranch Corambe sp. on a bryozoan colony (Membranipora sp.).  Look closely to spot the circular shape of the nudibranch. They're incredibly well camouflaged, with white lines and brown splotches to match the bryozoan (which is the nudibranch's prey).

I've written about Corambe before, so for more info check out the post called "Ay, Corambe!" from 20 September 2013 and "A story with a point" from 17 August 2014.  The latter post has a link to Eric's excellent Corambe video — worth watching!