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Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Green Eggs and Sand

  


Eric spotted these amazingly green fish eggs last week.  They were on the side of a boulder in the intertidal zone along the shoreline of Drakes Estero.  I'm not sure which species of fish laid them, so if you have any thoughts about that, I'd love to learn more!

Here's a close-up so you can appreciate the color:

 

 
 
And here's a photo of sand from 2008.  I'll admit, there's no real connection to the green eggs above, except that it lets me use the title "Green Eggs and Sand"...which sounds a little like Dr. Seuss's "Green Eggs and Ham".   :)
 
 

2 comments:

Bill Wolpert, Architect said...

Wow! I can't get over than green color! Amazing. Why suspect they are fish eggs and not something else? Size and shape?

Jackie Sones said...

Hi, Bill!

Yes, the size and shape are very similar to other fish eggs we've seen -- see this post for an example:

https://bodegahead.blogspot.com/2021/02/red-end-of-spectrum.html

But I haven't been able to find an example of local fish eggs with this color green (at least not yet). So, why so green? Were they laid by a certain species of fish? Does the mother's diet affect egg color? Are green eggs more common in greener habitats (with algae and seagrass)?

:) Jackie