Be dazzled!

 

Many of you will remember what this is.  After a big swell in late September, squid egg capsules started washing ashore on the outer coast.

I posted a picture similar to this last winter and shared some information about the capsules — see "Dislodged from the deep" on 15 January 2014.

Then I posted pictures of newly hatched squid paralarvae and their beautiful chromatophores — see "Something about cephalopods" on 16 January 2014.

Now you get to see something even better — a video of these wonderful chromatophores in action!  Although the still photos are attractive, it's much more informative to see how fast the chromatophores can change.

Enjoy and be dazzled!

 

Squid chromatophores from Jackie Sones on Vimeo.

 

Selenelion

No, that wasn't a typo for "sea lion."  ;)  Selenelion is a term for the rare celestial event occurring early in the morning of October 8th — a nearly simultaneous lunar eclipse and sunrise.

Just in case you're reading this on Tuesday night, the lunar eclipse occurs between 1:45-6:05 a.m. on Wednesday morning, with a peak between 3:25-4:24 a.m. Pacific Time.

I don't know if it will be clear if enough to see the eclipse, as it's been quite foggy during the past few mornings.

The moon is visible now (~8:30 p.m.): 

 

But I had to take these pictures in between strands of fog streaming by:

 

Let me know if you catch a glimpse of the eclipse or even the selenelion!

 

A ribbon worm in your cap!

 

Thanks to Carol, we finally got to see a pilidium!  This is the larval stage of a nemertean, or ribbon worm.  It was in a plankton sample collected about 1 kilometer off Bodega Head.

Here's a view of the basic anatomy: 

 

 Modified from A Guide to Marine Coastal Plankton and Marine Invertebrate Larvae (Second Edition) by Smith and Johnson (1996)

Amazingly, the juvenile ribbon worm develops inside this larva that looks like a little hat.  Pilidium comes from the word pileos for "felt cap."

The pilidium is a very graceful swimmer and it also has a fascinating feeding behavior.  It uses both long cilia and flexing movements of its lobes (the "ear flaps") to direct water currents and food particles towards its mouth.  Here's a picture of the cilia along the edges of the lobes.

 

Once the juvenile ribbon worm is ready, it breaks out of the episphere, consumes the larval body, and crawls away.  In this case, we got lucky, because the development of the swimming stage was nearly complete.

One day after we looked at it, we noticed that the "cap" looked smaller.  And the next day, the juvenile ribbon worm had emerged!

Below are pictures of the tiny ribbon worm.  The first image shows the entire ribbon worm not long after metamorphosis.  The second image includes a ruler for scale (with millimeter marks).

 

 

Can you believe how small it is?

Eric was fortunate to capture a few moments in the life of this pilidium and juvenile ribbon worm on film:

Nemertean pilidium from Jackie Sones on Vimeo.

We're not sure which species of ribbon worm this is. In fact, most pilidium larvae haven't been matched to their ribbon worm adults!  But note that this juvenile ribbon worm has a caudal cirrus, the narrow extension at the tail end.  Not all ribbon worms have caudal cirri, but the two ribbon worms I've shown on the blog do — Micrura verrilli and Micrura wilsoni. 

No Trespassing, unless...

...you're an avian visitor and need a place to rest!

 

Brown Booby (Sula leucogaster) perched on the Half Moon Bay Buoy (NDBC Station 46012) on 5 October 2014.

Coming in off the water

They almost fooled me.  With the warm weather and south winds today, there was a good chance for dragonfly and butterfly movements along the coast.  

When I was near the bluffs in the early morning, I noticed some dragonflies coming in off the water.  They were medium-sized and golden in color, so my first thought was that they could be gliders.

But after hawking insects, they landed in low shrubs — not typical behavior for a glider.  Here's what I saw when I finally found one perched:

 

They were immature Variegated Meadowhawks (Sympetrum corruptum).

Below is a slightly different view:

 

Variegated Meadowhawks are known for dispersing along the coast in the fall, and today was a good day for seeing them on Bodega Head!

Action over the ocean

A few days ago, we were walking on the beach and I heard an interesting bird call from out over the ocean.  It's hard to describe how fast your brain can register these sounds.

I realized what it was, scrambled to get my camera out of the bag, and then just pointed towards the object that was closest to where the sound was coming from and started clicking.  This is the first shot I got: 

 

And then one of the birds flew by overhead: 

 

Although the light was dim, I liked the story, the action captured in the first photo, and the classic silhouette of a Peregrine Falcon in the second. 

Were these falcons in a territorial dispute?

A shade of purple

 

Well, I couldn't help it.  This is another Moonglow Anemone (Anthopleura artemisia) from a Bull Kelp holdfast.  Although the color of this species is known to be variable, I hadn't seen one quite like this before and I just had to share it with you.  

How would you describe the color of the tentacles?  I'd call it a shade of purple.  And after searching around in my head, I eventually landed on aubergine.  What do you think?  Did you come up with a different color?

In some light, the oral disc of the anemone had beautiful blue reflections:

 

But in the end, it was the tentacles that really drew me in.  What an amazing color!