Northwest Dive Club

The Green urchins are still dominating the scene at Keystone and Coupeville, but they are not immortal :

I actually had an urchin that recovered from that- lost all its spines and I figured it was toast, but I never got around to removing it from the tank and it regrew them.

Mabey there is hope for my missing finger. I just have to stay in the tank long enough.
-Curt

Thank you Greg, that is very interesting, got to pass that on to Ron.
First dive at Deception Pass this year. Hydroids on sticks caught my attention:

It is always treat to find GPO out in the open.
This guy was like: "You can click away as long as you want, paparazzi don't bother me 1

Love it!!

Flat out awesome.

Way cool Jan!

Sooooooooo amazing!!!!!!
The line about the ling cod is hilarious!

Thank you all for your commends.
On my dive at the highest King Tide on Friday, I found lots of juvenile Sand dollars. And quite number of Pink short-spined sea stars.
Almost all of them had one in their mouths.

Very cool!
I have yet to see an alive sand dollar in the sound!

Wow super cool! You always find the neatest critters!

In amazement as usual, Jan!

YellowEye wrote:Very cool!
I have yet to see an alive sand dollar in the sound!

They are plentiful at Fox Island West Wall in the shallows to your right when entering the water (the opposite way from the wall)

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 evidence of adult sand dollars in the area?
Thanks again for all of your fascinating posts.

Curiously yours,
Alex

Alex, the reason I choose king tide for this dive - the entry into Holmes Harbor water in Freeland on low tide is almost impossible, mud/sand for long ways out, also I was curious what will show up on this very high tide. (nothing unusual).
1.The encounter with sand dollars occurred in deeper water, past the eel grass beds in 30 feet of water.
2. The stars were small and large, definitely adults some of them. I never saw wasting Pisasters here, and even the Pycnodopia just disappeared for while, unlike in other places, I did not see the piles of goo like in other places. But then again, sea stars were never numerous here.
3. I did see adult sand dollars here, in little bit shallow part of the area, but not this time.

They are ghosts indeed. Their mounds are very common, but the shrimp I rarely encounter .
This guy for some reason did not like the Green sea urchins

Ghost shrimp provide the primary food source for the gray whales when they are in Puget Sound. As a consequence the state shut down the commercial harvesting of the ghost shrimp. (It was an extremely small fishery, 2-3 operators at most.) At low tide at Langley and in front of my house I can see the large divots left by the whales in their pursuit of these shrimp. Cool sighting.
-Curt

I am not into video, but here is a short clip of the ghost ;
https://jankocian.smugmug.com/Underwate ... -c8KCFNq/A

Cool! I've never seen one. I need to come visit so I can see this cool little critter.

Very cool! How big do they get Jan?

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 to time and occasionally one of the burrows would be adjacent to the glass - thus making the shrimp visible.

According to Greg Jensen's book the Bay Ghost Shrimp maxes out at 4.8" long while the Giant Ghost Shrimp gets to 5.9". With luck, Greg will chime in with an I.D. on this particular animal (my personal WAG is that it's a giant rather than a bay).

Shrimply yours,
Alex

Alex, Greg confirmed that it is Bay ghost based on the shape of the eyes.

It has been hard to find slugs around Whidbey lately,might be my eyes.
At least the anemones are big enough and seeing the white strings -acondia-
an indication that there might be some action

The new batch of recruits at Langley Harbor is still doing OK.

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