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!

Two volcanoes

  

We've been working the low tides this week, so I'm running out of time tonight, but here's a quick photo of two Volcano Keyhole Limpets (Fissurella volcano) taken in San Diego.  This is more of a southern species, but we've been keeping our eyes open for them in Bodega Bay.  If you spot one in Sonoma County, I'd love to hear about it!

Sea and sky

  

Whew, lots of low tide work down here in San Diego.  Here's the view to the west as we finished up tonight (4 November 2021).

Spotted and striped

Just a quick photo of some nice Long-armed Brittle Stars (Amphiodia occidentalis) that Eric discovered in the intertidal zone in San Diego today:

 

 

The lowest individual is upside down, but check out the interesting color patterns, especially the spotting on the central disc between the arms.  [You can click on the image for a larger version.] 

 

There's an older NHBH about this species from 2013, so if you'd like to see a video of this species in action, see the post called "Fastest digger in the West".