Northwest Dive Club

Thank you Alex,
You guessed right, photos of sea stars with all the unusual features were taken over the years.
But I do seem to find more of the Evasterias with four or six arms instead the normal five.
But it could be because I pay much closer attention to sea stars these days.

Interesting shots.

Some are wounded however, but it looks like a few possibly recovered from the wasting syndrome and are regenerating?! Is that a possibility? Or was the fatality rate 100?

Curious if you know anything, and thanks for the shots!

Tom, I don't know the answer, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were some survivors since some of the stars are adult size.

Lingcod will sometimes charge when I approach and yet,
here he just ignores the anemone eating eggs he is in charge to protect...

Finding three Puget Sound King crabs at Keystone is quite unusual ...

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 whether the crabs you saw were hungry or horny.

Mysteriously yours,
Alex

Field of anemones - hard to believe that they are animals and not flowers...

I had no idea there were nematocysts on the column, too. The things I learn from this thread!

Foggy and gray above, colors beneath ... Deception Pass in February.

After the foggy Deception Pass to the sunny Keystone Pilings.
What a difference couple days make. Although the parking lot was full of diver cars and lots of divers milled out and in water when I arrived there, I did not see one diver in the 90 minutes I spent under the old wharf.

Still a mystery, the blisters now appear on the white cucumbers :(

Weird.

Well, Edmonds is not on Whidbey Island, but you can see it from Possession Point
Last time I visited Edmonds Underwater Park was in March 2004, so I though it was
time to check it out again. Eleven years ago I was shooting film in my Nikonos camera.
Marek SK, fellow NWDC diver was my companion, as there is no solo at EUP and he knew
where the Cabezon nests are, since this was my primary reason to revisit Edmonds. I have
never found Cabezon nesting on Whidbey... And it is a long swim, it was easier 11 years ago

The main reason I left my island was to get some pictures of the Cabezon guarding eggs, something I was so far unable to do on Whidbey. Edmonds is famous for the feisty fish and eleven years ago, when I was there, I got attacked many times by just swimming near the Cabezon nesting site. To my surprise, this time, they left me alone ...

The Swiss Army claw crab

Mouths of a different style, one usually down, close to the rock,
the other up facing the open waters...

Gotta love the mouth / anus combination. Kind of a weird evolutionary / design "thingie".

Come to think of it, that explains a few people I know. Could it be?!?

Intertidal Filament worms are busy laying eggs ...

Wow.

The Red Sea Cucumber seem to be spawning one month earlier this year, at least at Penn Cove.

Every single time I come here, I am again astonished at what I learn -- amazing information, and so beautifully illustrated!

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 spawned in two pulses; one about a month early and a second (larger) pulse at about the normal time. I haven't looked at the data for Port Angeles harbor but we did get reports from nearby areas the water was slightly warmer than normal last winter. Something like that could be happening in Penn Cove but another possibility has to do with the amount of sunlight we've been having. According to Cliff Mass at the U Dub this has been a far sunnier than normal winter - http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2015/02/t ... sonal.html . Just conjecture, but it's possible to imagine brighter sunshine ramping up phytoplankton productivity which then leads to early spawning in non-selective planktivores like cucumbers.

Brightly yours,
Alex

Thank you Lynne and Alex for kind words, I too learn more and more with each new dive in local waters.
Researching the subjects I don't know nothing about offers new information supplied by people who spent
untold hours doing the research and then making it possible for others to enjoy. To all of them goes the credit,
I only push the shutter button trying to illustrate their discoveries.
Speaking of discoveries, I made one of my own diving yesterday the Deception Pass. I passed over this spot,
many, many times before, but never noticed the old Admiralty type anchor embedded so well into the reef
that it became a part of it. No idea how long it takes to become so overgrown that it escapes the attention
of divers passing over it, and who would anchor in Deception Pass to begin with ? Interesting ...

Exciting!

In memory of Leonard Nimoy, I would add "fascinating". I also read that when Vancouver first explored the region, he found the wreck of an old European-style ship on Whidbey Island. A mystery.
-Curt

Brittle star coloring ...