Post summer recap 2014

Conditions have been extreme this year - extreme drought conditions and heat have brought on multiple fires. On Sept. 12th Silverado Canyon burned again;1600 acres was the last I heard. Kings fire in the Sierra Nevadas burned over 75,000 acres shortly after - just massive.  

Eastern Pacific hurricanes have come on, one after the other this year - I think it was Norbert, then Mary, then Simon. Surfers are in paradise. A friend's father visiting from out of town is believed to have drowned at Salt Creek. We've avoided the beach for some time. Our kids are strong swimmers, but the current is so strong it's not worth the risk. Plus the heat has been in the 100s for days on end. Here's a short clip of the surf at Dana Point Harbor during the Tall Ship festival this year. 

The few times we did make it to the beach, I was hopeful the rough waters would wash up some amazing creatures, but we never seemed to make it at the right time. Everything had desiccated and died already. 

The kids found this set of barnacles in a dried heap of kelp. 

And this tiny white spotted crab. I haven't been able to identify it. 

Here's our boy measuring the tide with sticks - I'm pretty sure the feet and inches are not measured by the amount of beach the tide recedes down, but by the vertical sea level? Leave him be, he's being industrious and he's clever. They work these things out on their own with their books eventually and are more learned for the experience than when we tell them everything.  

Here are what we think are baby octopus. There were at least five of them in holes in the same area where we know two octopus live. The surface of the water rippled from it's 'breathing' just like with the other octopus and when we placed things on top of it, it blew it off with a blast. I'm convinced, but I need to go back to confirm it. How can you get an octopus to emerge? Poking it certainly didn't work. It retreated instead. Five baby octopus in the same rock - imagine finding that!

Here is my other great find. A skeleton shrimp. I found one a year and a month ago for the first time and I never saw one again until this. Such a funny, cute, curious, little creature. They are nearly impossible to find because of their tiny size, but you can learn how to find them when you have eyes to see and time to look.  

Caspers Park up Ortega Highway has an astronomer who is passionate about stars up there every Saturday before the new moon. We went and had the opportunity to see Saturn - ring and all - with our very own eyes. He also gave us a tour of the stars with his high powered pointer - it was absolutely wonderful! Then a group of people showed up with Kona coffee straight from Hawaii that day and offered me a cup - stars and fresh coffee - it doesn't get much better than that!

There were bug people there too - with a sheet and some neon lights. I just love when people are passionate about nature. These are the people you want to get your kids around - they love what they do. They're not experts lecturing kids - they're people alive with interest and curiosity and joy in what they do. We spent some time looking at the beautiful moths and bugs that came to the lights with them. 

 I wish there was more, but summer is lazy.

Extreme tide, star fish, octopus, and garibaldi

Some kind of flu has brought our entire household to a standstill this past week. Each of us have had about three days of fever and chills with a deep seated bronchial cough keeping us awake through the night. It has been the worst we've had in years.

Last Thursday we went to Treasure Island for the -1.8 extreme low tide. It was a cold and cloudy day.

You can see a small berm pushed up by the waves, and an opportunistic boy :)

Take a look at this large rock on the beach:

Now in this next picture of our kids sledding down a berm on January 18th (a week and five days earlier), you can see the very same rock in the upper right side of the picture and the bottom 1/3rd of it is buried in sand. Quite a bit of sand moved off the beach during that time.

Cindy found this dead sea star, upside down, laying in a crevice, which seemed significant in light of the sea star wasting syndrome being talked about in the news.

Here's a closer look where two arms are missing

While there is a lot of fear that it is being caused by radiation from the Fukushima plant across the Pacific, this post set my mind at ease about that. It made a couple great points:
1. ONLY sea stars are affected. Wouldn't radiation affect all living creatures?
2. There are incidents of sea star wasting disease being reported on the east coast as well.

With all the extremes in weather we've seen recently it wouldn't be too far fetched to imagine some other factor is affecting the sea stars.

Here's a pretty little shaded cove I found filled with anemone, sea urchin, and coraline algae.

Here's a beautiful watercolor of the landscape by one of the girls.

And here is an octopus. Can you find it? Click on the picture for a larger view.

You can watch it move in this video:

Here's a video on Octopus by Dr. Bill Bushing who dives off Catalina Island. After watching it, I grew convinced that the octopus above is a two-spot octopus. What do you think?

And here's a video of a garibaldi. It's a terrible video, you can hardly see it, but can you guess why it has blue on it? Garibaldi are typically orange, named after an Italian soldier who went into battle wearing an orange cape, it is the state fish of California. 

Octopus Adventures

"Twice a month the shore experiences extreme tides. When the sun, earth, and moon are in a straight line, their combined tug causes spring, or extra high and low tides. When the sun and moon are in right-angle position with regard to the earth, their influence is less, as the respective pulls tend to cancel each other out. The ensuing neap tides, as they are called, have a small rise and fall. Excessive spring tides occur in May and June and in November and December, prior to and around the summer and winter solstices." ~An Island Called California, p.3

California Aglaja (Navanax Inermis)

Black Sea Hare (Aplysia Vaccaria)

Coralline Algae (Lithothamnion sp.)

The dark area beneath the rock slab in the foreground is the Octopus' lair

My 5yo found the first octopus on one side of this rock after seeing it, the following video shows how we found the next one on the other side of the same rock.

Marine Invertebrates in Kelp Holdfasts

Holdfast of Giant Kelp (Macrocystis Pyrifera)

Growth pattern of Giant Kelp (Macrocystis Pyrifera)

Brooding Sea Anemone (Epiactis Prolifera) it's spitting something out

Unidentified Crab Megalops Larvae

California Sea Hare (Aplysia Californica)

Striped Sea Hare (Navanax inermis)

Sandcastle Worm? (phragmatopoma californica)

Unidentified - egg sac?

Peanut Worm? (Sipuncula)

Eighteen Scaled Worm? (Halosydna brevisetosa) you can also see the 'foot' of the mussel sticking out

Purple Star (Pisaster Ochraceus)

Ghost Shrimp?

Larval Octopus (look close you can see it's suckers)

Purple Sea Star and Unidentified Brittle Star

western spiny brittle star (ophiothrix spiculata) - September 5, 2013
"ophio" meaning snake or serpent, "thrix" meaning hair, and "spicula" meaning needle. These stars can be found entangled in the washed up holdfasts of the majestic Giant Kelp (macrocystis pyrifera). We have observed it "milk" a whitish substance once and this time one of the stars released an orange colored cloudy substance; eggs?

Here are its spines under the microscope... amazing.