The Natural History of Bodega Head

    We went out to the rocky shore early this morning to start some surveys.  Right away Eric noticed that the tidepools looked unusual.  Al...

    We had to do some field work in Monterey County yesterday, but we arrived a little early, so had a few minutes to observe a few sea otte...

    Close-up of the inside of a California Mussel ( Mytilus californianus ).

    Close-up of barnacles on a Californa Mussel ( Mytilus californianus ) shell, photographed on 29 April 2024. There are at least two age c...

    This morning (24 April 2023) we were finishing some surveys at a site with lots of wave splash.  In this case that means the intertidal ...

    Whew, I'm finally getting over a heel injury...and it's just in time for spring field work!  Eric and I were doing some intertid...

    Black Oystercatcher ( Haematopus bachmani ) and California Mussels ( Mytilus californianus ).  Photographed at sunset on 17 January 2022...

    One morning last week when we were headed out to do field work, we noticed an odd smell in the area and later we found the source — some...

      Colors on the inside of a California Mussel ( Mytilus californianus ) shell.    Would you have guessed?  :)

    Although you might have heard that sea stars use their tube feet to grab hold of mussels and to pull the two valves open slightly (enoug...

Yesterday (20 January 2020), I spent a little time watching Surfbirds ( Calidris virgata , formerly Aphriza virgata ) along the rocky outer ...

  Remember the mussel mortality event that I mentioned last week?  (See posts called " Too hot " and " Too hot -- Part ...

For the record, I'm sharing a few more photos of the California Mussel mortality event in the intertidal zone that I mentioned last nigh...

Last week's record warm air temperatures (for the date) seem to have impacted some of the local rocky intertidal zone species.  Unfortun...

A couple of days ago, on 26 October 2013, an unusual object on the beach caught my eye:   This is what it looked like when I flipped ...

Okay, I'll admit it.  There probably aren't too many people in the world with a quest to capture an aesthetically pleasing and meani...