On the penultimate day of 2020 I met up with my goddaughter, Katherine, and her family up at Pigeon Point to have two adventures. The first one was to find a marble that had been hidden a part of a game. We got skunked on that one, although the marble…
Tag: marine biology
And. . . action!
At the end of August I got to play animal wrangler for a film production. Back in the late winter I had been contacted by an intern at KQED in San Francisco, who wanted to shoot some time-lapse footage of anemones dividing. We went out and collected anemones, I got…
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Emergence
Every summer, like clockwork, my big female whelk lays eggs. She is one of a pair of Kellett’s whelks (Kellettia kellettii) that I inherited from a labmate many years ago now. True whelks of the family Buccinidae are predatory or scavenging snails, and can get pretty big. The female, the…
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Plants and algae as real estate
I’ve written before about the rocky intertidal as a habitat where livable space is in short supply. Even areas of apparently bare rock prove to be, upon closer inspection, “owned” by some inhabitant or inhabitants. That cleared area in the mussel bed? Look closely, and you’ll likely find an owl…
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Felicitous cleavages
This morning as I was doing my rounds at the marine lab I noticed a pile of eggs next to one of the bat stars (Patiria miniata) in a large table. Somebody, or more likely, multiple somebodies, had spawned overnight. I have absolutely zero time to deal with another ongoing…
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Making babies
Every year, in June, my big whelk lays eggs. I have a mated pair of Kellettia kellettii living in a big tub at the marine lab. I inherited them from a lab mate many years ago now, and they’ve been nice pets. They’ve lived together forever, and make babies reliably….
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A new site and a new understanding
I’ve always known staurozoans (Haliclystus ‘sanjuanensis’) from Franklin Point, and it goes to reason that they would be found at other sites in the general vicinity. But I’ve never seen them up the coast at Pigeon Point, just a short distance away. At Franklin Point the staurozoans live in sandy-bottom…
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General natural history 
Fishing in surge channels
This weekend we have some of the loveliest morning low tides of the year, and fortunately the local beaches have been opened up again for locals. The beaches in San Mateo County had been closed for two months, to keep people from gathering during the pandemic. For the first time…
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Unusual numbers of the usual suspects
Today was the first time I’ve gone out on a low tide since before the whole COVID19 shelter-in-place mandates began. Looking back at my records, which I hadn’t done until today because it was much too depressing, I saw that my last time out was 22 February, when the low…
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Marine biology 
A different sort of coral
I’m willing to bet that when you think about coral, what comes to mind is something like this: The reef-building corals of the tropics are indeed spectacular structures, incredibly rich in biodiversity and worthy of a visit if you ever get the chance. These coral colonies come in many shapes,…
