Hard to believe another year has gone by. Here are a few festive invertebrates from our tidepooling last week to help celebrate turning the corner into 2023. Enjoy!
Above, a beautiful tubeworm, Serpula columbiana.
Next, an unidentified sabellid worm:
A wonderful peanut worm, Themiste pyroides:
Best wishes for the new year ahead!
4 comments:
Spectacular things I have never seen before. In the first photo what are the red blotchy things surrounding the tubeworm?
I love learning new things from your blog.
Carolyn
Hi, Carolyn!
I wondered if someone might wonder about those! The red patches are bryozoans -- Eurystomella bilabiata, informally called Derby Hat Bryozoans. Each patch is made up of many zooids. Here are some examples showing the bryozoans with their feeding tentacles extended:
https://bodegahead.blogspot.com/2012/02/pretty-in-pink.html
https://bodegahead.blogspot.com/2020/02/out-and-about.html
Thanks for asking!
:) Jackie
Jackie, those tube worm pics are so festive… good choices!
And th nudibranch is just so photogenic w/ it’s orange tipped
horns! Aaah, they are just so small and hard to find… how is
It you get so lucky? Do you turn over the kelp blades to try and find them?
Please reveal any tips… !
Thanks for doing your blog👍💖
Hello!
A few nudibranch-finding tips:
- Go low (it's often easier to find them on excellent minus low tides)
- Go slow (it often takes our eyes/minds a while to adjust to tidepool settings)
- Look carefully (for any bits of color that seem different)
- Be patient (sometimes things appear after you've already been looking for a while)
- Keep trying (it's like fishing, sometimes you find them, sometimes you don't)
- Practice, practice, practice (it gets easier with time and experience)
- Study (review field guides/photos ahead of time to develop search images)
- Accept variability (some sites, some seasons, some years are better than others)
- Think about food (different nudibranchs eat different things, but if you can find their prey, you might find the nudibranchs -- see hints about prey in the field guides)
- Review reports (you can check a place like iNaturalist and filter for nudibranchs and a geographic area you might be visiting (e.g., a county) to see recent observations or where they have been reported in the past)
- Go with/invite other observers (the more eyes, the better)
Sometimes when people ask me about how to find invertebrates in tidepools, I also think about how I've personally been doing this sort of searching for over 40 years (!), but I learn something new every time I go out, so it's always worth another look around. :)
I hope this helps!
Jackie
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