On our first low-tiding visit to the beach last year, Rowan brought me this little string of translucent green beads she had found. I had never seen anything like it and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. I figured it must be an algae of some sort, and looking through my copy of A Field Guide to the Seaweeds of Alaska, I saw an evocative name in Jade Necklace (Urospora wormskioldii). The name certainly seemed apt for what Rowan found, although the photo in the book didn’t show a single strand (which was all I had seen), so I wasn’t sure.

I passed on the photos and was able to get confirmation that this was Jade Necklace, a species that’s apparently not very common (or perhaps just doesn’t last long enough in its most visible form), and is infrequently found. I hope to find it again sometime, and am glad Rowan’s sharp eyes allowed me to see and photograph this one.

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With this past weekend’s full moon (which I only saw briefly through the clouds) we had another nice low tide series. I didn’t end up braving the rain to make it down to the beach, but thought I would share this photo from a low tide at John Brown’s Beach earlier this summer. The Pygmy Rock Crab (Glebocarcinus oregonensis) is, as the name implies, fairly small. This one was maybe an inch and a half across the top. It’s also distinguished in part by its bumpy carapace (main shell). I don’t yet have enough experience to know how common (or at least easy to find) they are, but my impression is they are not unusual. Also, it’s my understanding that the brighter red highlights (seen in the photo above) are not typical, with most being a more uniform brick red color.

Questions:

• How common are these crabs?
• Where else can they be found around Sitka?
• What do they eat?
• What eats them?
• How long do they live?

More photos of Pygmy Rock Crabs from that day at the beach.

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When I was young, there were many occasions I spent playing down on the beach between Totem Park and the Sitka Sound Science Center. Although I saw many things, there are not too many that I remember noticing and/or being aware of during my childhood. Although I wouldn’t have been able to tell you any official name for it, the sea sac (Halosaccion glandiforme) is one of those organisms I certainly had knowledge of. In some respects, it’s just another seaweed – one of many different species that grow densely in the intertidal habitats here. While not hard to find on rocky beaches, neither is it abundant and hard to avoid noticing. However, it does have a characteristic that seems especially compelling to many kids (and certainly was to me). When found during a low tide, it is usually inflated and partially or completely filled with water (as in the photo above). Each sac also has very small holes (mostly toward the upper end) that you can’t really see. When squeezed gently, the water will spray out of these tiny holes (mostly in the direction it was pointed, but sometimes there were rogues that squirted the squeezer). No doubt it’s not hard to imagine what kids tend to do with these. Perhaps this speaks a bit to the power of child passions for building connections and memories that last.

I am curious if anyone else out there remembers these from childhood for similar reasons. Are there other things that might be obscure in many respects, but caught your eye as a child that you still remember? What drew you to them?

Recently we visited Magic Island (out at Halibut Point Rec) during a low tide and I took advantage of the opportunity to photograph some of the more obvious tidepool denizens which, for whatever reasons, I had not really spent much time with before. Prime among these are the giant green sea anemones (Anthopleura xanthogrammica).

As I understand it, the green color comes about either directly from, or through interaction with, symbiotic algae. I’m a little curious how those algae get in there in the first place, but perhaps further reading will reveal someone has investigated that. Individuals growing in dark areas (such as sea caves) may not be green at all. Another interesting trait of these anemones is their habit of gathering rocks about them during the cold and dark time of year.

They favor outer coast with higher energy, and are pretty common at Magic Island on the outer shore. It’s nice to find them in tidepools where it is possible to see them tentacles without the distorting effect of moving water.

We drove out the road today to check on the Swainson’s Thrush nest, but couldn’t see any birds using the nest. There were however many birds active in the brushy area adjacent to the road. Several thrushes were utilizing the ripe elderberries that were abundant on one large bush. In addition there were other smaller song birds such as juncos, chickadees, and warblers foraging in both the brush as well as the taller trees behind.

After spending a little time looking along the road, we went to the south beach of Halibut Point Rec to catch what was left of low tide. There were some interesting things going on there, most of which I’ll post about on their own separately. Highlights included Marbled Murrelets close to shore, ripe trailing currants (Ribes laxiflorum), and various intertidal creatures. There were a couple of kids (accompanied an adult) fishing for rock fish.

This morning the kids and I took advantage of sunny weather and a low tide to visit John Brown’s Beach and check out some of the work being done by some visiting scientists. They were setting up experiments in about 20 small tide pools. At the time they were simply working on the setup and getting preliminary measurements that they would use to compare with similar measurements taken during and after the treatments were applied. In this case they planned to either warm tide pools or increase acidity (by bubbling CO2 through). [I later spoke with them for my radio show about their experiment and more]

This evening I happened to notice the sunset was shaping up to be pretty colorful, so I quickly went down to Swan Lake and took a flurry of photos over about 10 minutes of one of the more spectacular sunsets I have ever seen. While I was working on processing them, I noticed that noctilucent clouds appeared to be forming, so I went out again around midnight to get some pictures of them.

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This morning we went down to the science center for a brief talk followed up by beach walk. The talk focused on possible effects of climate change on intertidal life, highlighting some of the results seen during the speaker’s PhD research in California. The speaker is one of two resident fellows (SIRF) at the science center along with her husband.

Fog persisted into the morning, and as we walked down to the beach around 9am, we could only barely make out the large cruise ship anchored in the bay, and everything beyond was flat gray. Shortly thereafter, parts of the sky became brighter and the fog lifted a bit. It appeared that blue sky might reach us as the clouds dissipated, however it was not to be – they hung over town throughout the day.

Down at the beach I investigated a bit more closely the sea grasses, and noted a patch of surf grass (Phyllospadix serratulus) at the base of Sage Rock. For some reason I hadn’t previously noted that, as it presumably (in my mind) just blended in with extensive eel grass (Zostera marina) beds.

It seemed like Connor and (especially) Rowan enjoyed having some other kids down there to look around with, and I certainly had some interesting conversations about intertidal life and some of the mysteries there.

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Sea Cauliflower (Leathesia marina) seems to be a relatively easy to identify seaweed with relatively thick flesh growing in lumpy masses. It was abundant at John Brown’s beach early this summer, though I’ve not been familiar with it long enough to have a sense of how common it is more generally in the area. The Seaweeds of Alaska book indicates it is an annual species.

Questions:

• What process allows a spore to stick to the rocks even though waves are consistently washing over?
• How far do spores of this algae disperse?
• When it is growing, is each of the lumps starting from an individual starting spore, or do they spread into multiple lumps?

Sea Cauliflower on Natural History wiki

A friend arrived in town yesterday for the low tide series and I agreed to provide transportation and do some low tide looking. We decided on John Brown’s Beach, aiming to be there around 6:45 for the -2.6 tide about an hour later. Unfortunately, last night I was up until nearly 1am when I felt compelled to capture and photograph several moths that showed up at the light (those are pictured with yesterday’s photojournal, despite mostly being taken after midnight). With the early wake-time, it ended up being a very short night of sleep. Still, it was worth getting down to the beach with someone who is very knowledgeable about the organisms that live there. The pictures are available below, but I’ll be highlighting many of them with a little more depth in the coming days and weeks (or months?).

This evening I went helped out with a group of folks doing a garden work co-op thing. I moved a few rounds and pruned some trees, but also took a bunch of pictures of bumblebees on chives.

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With a -2.2 tide predicted for this morning and the fairly reasonable time of 8:45am, we decided to spend some time at John Brown’s Beach. I imagine there will be additional posts in the coming days about some of the things we saw there.

Yesterday’s clear skies continued overnight and into today, though temperatures did not drop much overnight. It got up into the upper-60s at least, I think, and with minimal breeze it felt exceptionally warm to me. The warmth is melting what little snow there was right off the mountains. There are only tiny patches of snow below Picnic Rock on Vertovia, for example. I suspect if Harbor Mountain Road isn’t open yet, it will be soon. I don’t know how long it will take for the alpine flowers to start blooming, but I suspect it won’t be long if they haven’t started already. (I did see some photos taken up on Starrigavan Ridge last weekend, and though there was very little snow left on the ground, Baby Bear Lake was still filled with snow/ice, it appeared.)

The kids got some tickets for the carnival that’s in town for a few days, so we spent some time there this afternoon. They enjoyed the rides, though they mostly looked pretty nausea inducing to me.

While I was up at Kreuger field playing catch (not enough people showed up for a game of frisbee), I noticed Ravens making a lot of noise in the woods not far from the field. It’s the second time I’ve heard them doing that in the same area, which makes me wonder what might be up there.

(more photos to come when I get them processed)

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We did not have a lot of time, but Rowan has been wanting to visit Sandy Beach when the tide was low enough for the sand to be exposed, so we took a side trip there before going to the grocery store. Highlights included my first vermillion star, an ant-like intertidal beetle, and 2-5 California sea lions near the rocky point north of the beach.

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Although this species has been said not to pinch, I discovered this is not strictly the case. It does tend to stretch out its claws and stiffen up when handled, but it will sometimes reach under and try to grasp whatever might be there, as seen in the photo above where it has its claw against my fingernail. Unfortunately, the first time I realized it would do this was when it got my finger and grabbed on. I was a little surprised at how tightly it held on, I finally had to pry a little bit on the pincer with other hand and kind of pull. It actually ended up drawing a little blood and left me with a sore fingertip for a day or so.

Today we took advantage of the sunny weather and visited Magic Island, where I took pictures of some lichens and other flora and fauna that caught my attention.

Of particular interest were a very late Hermit Thrush foraging at the edge of the woods and on the beach. Also several plants getting started early in the unseasonably warm winter we have been having so far. Rowan found a large flat worm while looking in the tide pools on Magic Island, and while I was out looking at it, I noticed a couple of Common Murres, one appearing to be completely back to breeding plumage.

This evening I was able to get some pictures of a male Anna’s Hummingbird resting in the pine tree between visits to our feeder.

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