You’re going to love this 🙂
More kelp finds at the beach this week. I looked around at all the beached kelp to check for ones that had the holdfast attached since many marine creatures hide in there.
In this little piece of holdfast mingled with kelp mingled with shell, etc…
we found annelids! (sea worms!!!)
Look at how they swim… like snakes! I think my husband’s comment was “Ew.” Poor man; the CM nature study abuse he tolerates! ;-p
I imagine da Vinci could have mapped out the locomotion of this worm in fantastic drawings and figured out the mathematical equation for the movement of its segments. How keen the eye must be.
Here’s a page at UCI with images of the annelids of Orange County.
I discovered a certain humorous Dr. Bill Bushing who lives in “self-imposed poverty” filming his scientific research in the waters surrounding Catalina Island. I emailed for help in identifying some of the invertebrates we’d found on the kelp and he was very helpful. He finished his email with “Off to film giant sea bass!” I just love running into people who are so passionate about what they do.
He has a series of very technical videos on the underwater sea life surrounding Catalina Island including a 3 part series on giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) and one I love with views of a Cormorant diving for fish underwater. They dive from 150 – 200 feet! I thought the videos are helpful for the parent to learn and then share the knowledge gained with the littles in a more spontaneous living way.
Here’s a case of double occupancy – kind of like traveling towers in a limpet-tube worm? snail? kinda way 🙂
This caught my eye because it looked like an ‘H’. It looks like the same bryozoa we saw here, but instead of fanning out, it multiplied around the strand of kelp and across to another.
If you’re getting tired of kelp, Fall is around the corner and we’ll be heading out hiking again once the weather cools 🙂
