No Seastars remain at the Titlow Pilings
Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 10:04 am
Just did a dive out at Titlow yesterday with my usual buddies Andy and Mark. During periods of extended cold dry weather the viz improves enough to haul out the dome port with the fisheye lens, especially at places where there's great structure such as the old Titlow ferry dock pilings.
Over the years I've grown accustomed to hordes of giant sun stars cruising through the base of the pilings. Yesterday there were none. In fact, there were no seastars of any kind to be found, either on or near the pilings.
There were probably about 6 or so small (2-4 inch) sun stars scattered around the shallower areas on the swim to and from the pilings, perhaps they'll survive this and re-populate the area. We'll have to wait and see.
We did find quite a few nudibranchs, Frosteds were the most plentiful and there were also a number of Leopards. Just north of the main pilings we found a small patch of Flabellina triopha and a single Clown nudibranch.
Here's Mark photographing the Clown Nudibranch Triopha catalinae.
After diving around here for awhile you do get to see a fluctuation in numbers and quantities of different species, but I for one have never seen anything like this. Hopefully this absence of sea stars is only temporary and they'll rebound.
Dan
Over the years I've grown accustomed to hordes of giant sun stars cruising through the base of the pilings. Yesterday there were none. In fact, there were no seastars of any kind to be found, either on or near the pilings.
There were probably about 6 or so small (2-4 inch) sun stars scattered around the shallower areas on the swim to and from the pilings, perhaps they'll survive this and re-populate the area. We'll have to wait and see.
We did find quite a few nudibranchs, Frosteds were the most plentiful and there were also a number of Leopards. Just north of the main pilings we found a small patch of Flabellina triopha and a single Clown nudibranch.
Here's Mark photographing the Clown Nudibranch Triopha catalinae.
After diving around here for awhile you do get to see a fluctuation in numbers and quantities of different species, but I for one have never seen anything like this. Hopefully this absence of sea stars is only temporary and they'll rebound.
Dan