At 07:40 on Tuesday 5 January 2016, the sandbar at the mouth of Younger Lagoon broke open for the first time this rainy season. The Younger Lagoon Reserve (YLR) is located directly west (or “up the coast,” as we say; the terminology gets a little weird because the coastline runs east-west…
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The short drive home
Among some members of my family we have a not-quite-regular New Year’s tradition of meeting up for dim sum in one of the Bay Area restaurants. I’d say we can usually pull this event together 3-4 of every five years. It’s a totally casual affair: anybody who can, shows up…
Gyrations and gymnastics
Today is Monday, which means Scott and I changed the water for our Pisaster larvae. I should have taken some pictures to show you how we do it. Maybe next time. The largest and most developed larvae are now 2.2-2.5 mm long, not including the long brachiolar arms, which is…
From zero to cleavage in. . . nine hours
A recent college graduate and fellow marine lab denizen (Scott) and I are collaborating on a project to quantify growth rates in juvenile Pisaster orchraceus stars. This is one of the intertidal species whose populations in the field and in the lab were decimated by the most recent outbreak of…
I’m famous!
Well, fame is all relative, right? VICE magazine’s May 2015 issue is focused on environmental crises of various kinds. One of the feature articles is on sea star wasting, which I’ve blogged about before, beginning in September 2013. The author of the VICE article, Nathaniel Rich, came out to the…
A whole lotta pink
The temperate rocky intertidal is about as colorful a natural place as I’ve seen. Much of the color comes from algae, and in the spring and early summer the eye can be overwhelmed by the emerald greenness of the overall landscape due to Phyllospadix (surf grass, a true flowering plant) and…
The plague abates?
As of today, I am cautiously optimistic that the Pisaster wasting disease I’ve been dealing with for the past couple of weeks has run its course. There has been quite a cost, however, as a mortality rate of 90% leaves me with one lonely star remaining. This lone survivor reminds me of…
More sex and real estate
The birds do it, the bees do it, and now the frogs are doing it. There’s a small clump of trees between two of the houses across the street, and I think that’s where a male Pacific chorus frog has staked his claim. Every evening for the past few weeks…
The mother of all allergic reactions
Yesterday I went in for my allergy shots. I’ve been doing this immunotherapy for several years now, after innumerable yearly bouts of debilitating bronchitis that lasts for 6-8 weeks. Silly me. If I had done the allergy shots back in my 20s, I wouldn’t have had to suffer all these…