Northwest Dive Club

Hi Jan,

That's just amazing; to find that many species on one rock. Kudos for your observation ability!
Could you give us a sense of scale?

Amazedly yours,
Alex

Hi Dan,

Beautiful poster! Will you be posting when, where, and how to purchase these?

Commercially yours,
Alex

Greetings, Seeing one of these has got to be quite a crap shoot! At the Feiro Center we had a couple of them for 2+ years and only saw one out of the sand one time (and I don't think it was healthy). The only reason we knew they were still there was that their mounds would appear and grow from time ...

Hi Jan, Very cool find (and images)! A few questions: 1. You mentioned the king tide; were these animals in or near the intertidal zone? 2. What were the sizes of the stars & dollars? [I'm wondering if the stars are SSWD survivors or had they been born in the aftermath of SSWD.] 3. Was there any...

Greetings, With a few exceptions, sponges are all but impossible to identify in the field and working from a photo is even less likely to be accurate. That said, I'm not sure that this actually is a sponge. Sponges are characterized by (among other things) a huge number of water intake holes called ...

Hi Curt, I just saw an estimate that nudibranchs have been around for 180 million years. If they were to produce ONE generation per year then one nudibranch in the beginning would be responsible offspring numbering 20,000 to the 180 millionth power; I'm not going to do the math but I suspect that wo...

Greetings, I assume that you're looking for an answer that's more specific than "it's an epiphytic growth"; and I can't help with that. WAG would range from chain diatoms to fungus to bacterial aggregations. If there is an expert here it might help to pass on some additional information: 1...

I've never seen a black and orange clown nudi, is there a reason for this? Hi Erika, Smart ass answer #1 - You haven't seen one because you haven't been looking long enough or hard enough. Smart ass answer #2 - Yes, there is a reason for the color variation. More proper (and probably accurate) answ...

Greetings, Caveat - I don't really know the answer to this. What follows is speculation. For an octopus, egg laying is a very time consuming process. According to Jim Cosgrove it can take four weeks for mama octopus to lay her 60 to 80 thousand eggs. That means that egg #1 is nearly a month older th...

Greetings, Forgive me if this is belaboring the obvious but here are a couple of sites that might be helpful: http://www.seaslugforum.net/ http://slugsite.tierranet.com/ Your slug looks (to me anyway) a bit like some sort of sea hare so you might consider starting with that group. Sluggishly yours, ...

Howdy, According to Milton Love's book, Kelp Greenling produce 28 to 125 thousand eggs per year in three or more batches between July and January. He's not clear about where (geographically) his data come from so the timing may be somewhat different in Puget Sound. Spewing eggs into the water column...

The anemones are also gone in the 2nd pic. Would they have been feasting on the sponge - and would they also be on the menu of the dorid? Greetings, 1. Anemones eating sponge - Almost certainly not; anemones simply aren't mobile enough and seem to lack the ability to sense prey over any distance - ...

Hi Jan, Thanks for continuing to post these reports. Sorry if I'm being dense here but I've got a question about how the numbers are reported - when you say "25+ wasting 50+ Ochre stars" does that mean 25 sick out of 50 total or 25 sick and 50 (apparently) healthy? Statistically yours, Alex

Greetings, According to Wikipedia (if you can't trust them, who can you trust?): "When foraging, it [the manta ray] slowly swims around its prey, herding it into a tight "ball" and then speeds through the bunched organisms with a wide-open mouth" To me personally, that sounds lik...

Hi Dave, I have no firsthand experience with any sort of shark but a couple of years ago at the Feiro Center we had a Lobefin Snailfish apparently choke to death on a sculpin that was too big to swallow. Normally if a fish grabs something that's too big it simply spits it out; depending on species i...

Hi Dave,

Male Shiners turn very dark (almost black) during breeding season. They also get quite aggressive (but don't we all?).

Reproductively yours,
Alex

Hi Jan, Great post & terrific photos as always! For those interested, here are some background links: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/prime-fish-give-way-to-hordes-of-jellyfish-in-puget-sound/ (The recent Times article) http://www.int-res.com/articles/meps_oa/m525p153.pdf (T...

Hi Jim,

For more info on these egg cases, try this site:
http://www.asnailsodyssey.com/LEARNABOU ... elRepr.php

Start off with "Research Study 11" near the bottom of the page for a clear and succinct description of what goes on with these things.

Reproductively yours,

Alex

Greetings,

The orange thing is a Broad-Base sea squirt (Cnemidocarpa finmarkiensis)
The thing on top of it sort of looks like a not quite intact amphipod molt; no clue as to species. Was it moving at all?

Conjecturally yours,
Alex

Hi Jan,

Fascinating article; thanks for the link!

We've recently noted one or two Green Urchins with small patches of missing spines at the Feiro Center. Like you, I hope it's just a coincidence but the article makes it a little foreboding.

Ominously yours,
Alex

Hi Jan, Great photography as always! I should get used to it but I'm always blown away by numbers like the ones you quote from Bamfield; C. miniata is a fairly good sized animal and to have 45 of them per square meter is stunning! As to the timing - Last year the Six-Ray stars at the Fiero Center sp...

Hi Jan, Two bits of info from Greg Jensen's new book: 1. PS King Crabs congregate in shallower water in late winter/early spring to breed. 2. PS King Crabs eat sea stars (among other things) which may be in short supply wherever the crabs came from. That leads to idle but fun speculation as to wheth...

Hi Laura, Thanks for posting this video; it's the first thing I've seen that gives an idea of the size of the urchins that everyone is concerned about. As you mentioned, these animals are too large to have settled after SSWD was first noticed and must have migrated from elsewhere. It's interesting t...

Hi Jan,

Very cool images and I love the 115 year old reference material!

What is the time span of this collection - are the photos relatively recent or were they accumulated over several years?

Freakishly yours,
Alex

Hello again, Just a quick follow-up. I just looked at a number of pictures of Pinto Abalone and False Jingles and none of them seemed to show any sign of Yellow Boring Sponges ( Cliona sp. ); these sponges are often associated with Rock Scallops and are very much in evidence in the pictures shown ab...