Don’t let that unassuming lumpy appearance fool you – like a pesky little brother, this cushion star (Pteraster tesselatus) is loaded with snot and can fire at will. Any good scientist knows that mucous makes the world go round, and makes for a pretty effective defense. If you mess with this critter, expect things to get messy…
photo: E. Loury
This star was collected during a government fish trawl survey near southern California. Here’s a shot of the underside in case you need convincing that there is indeed a graceful sea star under all that slime.
Don’t get too excited, cowboys – cracking this sea whip would harm the fragile animal. That’s right, this is a photo of an animal – or many animals, actually. Sea whips are a type of deep-sea coral, and the “whip” structure is composed of a bunch of tiny polyps, each with its own mouth and tiny tentacles. These colonies live on the sea floor, and are sometimes collected during fish trawl surveys like this one was. Couple them with ocean tumbleweeds and you’d have yourself a sure-fire ocean Western.
These brown box crabs might easily get mistaken for rocks – but the “holes” they form in the joints of their claws makes them unmistakably distinct from other crab species. These specimens of Lopholithodes foraminatus were collected aboard a NMFS groundfish survey off southern California. They would make great adornments to an underwater rock garden if they could just hold that pose…
Don’t let the gentle name of the sunflower star fool you – these giant sea stars are voracious predators of the kelp forest. Wielding 24 arms and growing to sizes of over three feet across, Pycnopodia helianthoides is a fearsome force to be reckoned with for its prey of urchins, snails, clams – even other sea stars. When you have that many arms, you don’t have to play nice.
OK, so maybe you won’t find Sponge Bob at home here. But these sea pineapples, a type of tunicate or sea squirt, did come from several hundred feet under the sea (and are little muddier to show for it). This little crop was collected during a government trawl survey off of southern California. These squirts are definitely juicy, if not fruity!
Fish eat the darndest things – this baby abalone shell no bigger than your pinky nail came from a gopher rockfish stomach. Can’t imagine it was all that satisfying…
Happy 2011! We’re celebrating the new year with a bang – or, you might say, a photo explosion. If you’ve been trolling the Drop-In lately, you’ll see we’ve ramped up the number of photos we’re posting: glimpses of field research, class experiences, awesome sea creatures, and more. It’s all part of our ambitious new goal to bring you a steady stream of fresh photos, dropping you in alongside us in the great watery world that is marine science at Moss Landing Marine Labs. Between this journal of images and our more detailed blog stories, there’s bound to be something happening at the Drop-In, so make sure to check back often!
Today’s photo of a fish-eating anemone from Monterey Bay (the very same featured in our Drop-In banner!) exemplifies a potential resolution for the new year. Greet the world with arms or tentacles wide open, and you’ll be ready when good things come your way. Like that tasty shrimp or little fish passing by…
Anyone who has visited an MLML Open House knows that the puppet show is a longstanding tradition and major highlight for visitors of all ages. After much patience and anticipation, the 2009 puppet show is now available for your viewing pleasure!
Follow Harry Spotter the scorpion fish, Ron the rockfish, and Hermione the Hermit crab on a Darwin-inspired search for their relatives with shared adaptations. Their adventure takes them on a daring break-in to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where they meet an array of colorful and musical coral reef inhabitants!
The show is divided into two parts – apologies for the poor lighting in the first 1:30 minutes of the show!
The authors of The Drop-In are locked in the vice-grip of final tests, projects, papers, you name it, along with the rest of the MLML community. But the holiday break is approaching as quickly as our wandering attention spans. For a welcome distraction and a bit of good cheer, we invite you to vote for the best holiday-themed marine creature!
[polldaddy poll=1191250]
Of course, you want to be an informed voter, so meet the contenders:
The name says it all, really. This colorful polychaete (worm) spends its life bored into a coral, and extends its twin spiral plumes to filter-feed on passing plankton . Like Old Navy sweaters, they come in a variety of colors, from orange and yellow to blue and white. But if you pass a shadow over them, they may retract faster than your camera’s shutter (like the lower right of the photo)!
2. Firefly squid (Watasenia scintillans)
Firefly Squid (photo: gocarter.com)
Also called the the Sparkling Enope Squid, this three-inch marvel lives in the Western Pacific and packs a bioluminescent punch that rivals the light decorations of your most zealous neighbors. Their spectacular seasonal display is a tourist attraction and a natural monument in Japan!
Ok, the other contestants may cry foul for nominating an entire phylum, but there are too many cool comb jellies out there to choose just one. And a photo doesn’t do them justice either, because they are the equivalent of those “running” Christmas lights. Watch this video from the Vancouver Aquarium (if you can handle the cheesy sci-fi music…) to see the twinkly action! Comb jellies are also called ctenophores, and unlike true jellies (Phylum Cnidaria), they don’t have stinging cells, just lots of little hairs that defract light in really cool ways!
4. Bamboo coral (Isidella sp.)
A bamboo coral (photo: NOAA)
Bamboo corals may have more than 8 branches, but their candelabra shape made them a prime candidate to represent Hanukkah. (They also belong to the octocorals, because each of their little polyps has 8 tentacles!) This particularly beautiful representative was discovered by a team including Peter Etnoyer of the Deep Sea news! They found the deep-sea coral living on seamounts 700-2700 m deep in the Gulf of Alaska. Learn menorah about this cool new species at the Deep Sea News, including a video of its discovery!
Ornamented Wrasse (photo: JE Randall, fishbase.org)
It’s red, it’s green, it looks like it should be dangling from your tree, it’s sometimes called the Christmas wrasse, and it’s even found at the Christmas Islands. This little tropical darling clearly has a lot going for it, besides being the only vertebrate of the bunch!
Cast your vote today using our poll! Did we grossly omit any tinsel-worthy candidates? Post a comment to share your write-in vote!
by Amanda Kahn, Invertebrate Zoology and Molecular Ecology Lab
In our Ask a Grad Student page, Leeanna asked a bunch of really good questions, and all revolve around bivalves. Now, maybe you think you don’t know bivalves well enough to have them over for dinner, but I expect that many of you actually have had them FOR dinner! Bivalves include clams, mussels, oysters, scallops, and other generally clam-shaped animals with two shells. Class Bivalvia is within Phylum Mollusca, and its closest neighbors on the evolutionary tree are Classes Monoplacophora (extinct, snail-like animals), Polyplacophora (chitons), Gastropoda (snails and slugs), Scaphopoda (tusk shells), and Cephalopoda (octopuses and squids). Too much information? Too much information. Sorry. On to the questions!
Q: How do bivalves pump out water?
A: On each side of the foot inside of the bivalve (let’s say, for example, a clam), there are two big hollows, called mantle cavities. On one end of the bivalve’s shell, there is an inhalant and exhalant siphon, which the clam uses to pump water in and out of the mantle cavities.
There is some heavy-duty pumping going on...water pumping, that is! From Mutts comic strip by Patrick McDonnell
