Northwest Dive Club

Greg, what say you on this one that we found at Sund in January 2015?[/quote]

that is a skate case- much more rectangular shape, and I'm guessing considerably larger

Actually I think that's a brown cat shark egg case- very cool find

These are actually diamondback tritonia, Tritonia festiva. Still nice pics

Actually the Henricia with the white "armpits" like the one shown here are an undescribed species- one of many in our area

Correct- the shallow sloughs and low-vis estuaries where they live are unlikely dive sites

Gdog wrote:Wonder how they taste......

They taste like red rock crab- but there's very little meat in one, and you spend more calories getting it out than you get from eating it.

So maybe a good diet food

For those of you that venture south of the border (or dream of it) there's a great new book out on the invertebrates of northern Mexico

from the map it looks like there might be shore access- anyone know if one could get in there during the week?

Question for some of the (other) old-timers out there: I was looking at an old Cousteau book on octopus and squid the other day, and it said that Keystone jetty used to have some sort of underwater port/viewer that people could look out while divers brought things like octopus up to it for them to s...

Flatfish is a rock sole

The baby "great sculpin" is actually a buffalo- note the steeper profile of the face and smaller mouth. The big giveaway though is the raised row of scales on the upper part of the back.
That white adult is one strange looking beast, though.

Horseclam (Tresus)

yep, an amphipod- Podocerus cristatus. Comes in a wide variety of cool colors

...but how is he ever going to light it underwater?

I vote roughback- first pic shows that somewhat oval (rather than round) eye shape that is characteristic of the species

It's a bopyrid isopod- see the entry on it on pg. 13 of my newer book

I don't recall seeing Leptasterias of any kind this far down in the Sound, although I did record seeing one near Tahuya on Hood Canal a long, long time ago. Most refer to the colorful ones like Jan posted as L. aequalis, while the greenish-gray ones are L. hexactis. Both are very common on Skyline w...

I'm not sure that is a Leptasterias- thinking it might just be a juvenile Pisaster brevispinus with an extra arm. This has an obvious giant pedicellaria (at about 7 o'clock on the disk) and I don't think either of our local Leptasterias have these- can't see them in any of my pics or find any mentio...

Actually I don't think these are one of the nudies that uses nematocysts for its own defense-
see http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/3386

https://derekcs.smugmug.com/Underwater/Seattle-Diving/Redondo-Beach-Park-2016-01-28 Love the stubby eye. Were the crabs eating one of their own? I think it was a kelp crab, so depends on your definition of their own. Plus I think it was two different species fighting it out. Graceful crab (Cancer g...

Ogden Pt is a must-do. Easy access, great day or night. Ten mile point is also excellent, but you'll want to hit slack on a day without a big exchange. Willis point is good and a great fall-back if it's too rough elsewhere.

Well, you saw how clumsy and slow it was walking around in the open. Once they're out of the burrow they're toast- he's probably in a staghorn's tummy by now.

Sorry for the late response, just saw the question: yes, sea spider is the correct. Their relationship to terrestrial spiders is still a matter of debate, but it is a perfectly acceptable term.

Alex is correct in that the shape of the ghost shrimp's claw looks more like a gigas, but as noted the eyestalks are those of a californiensis. I've been fooled by ones like this in the past- it could be that regenerating claws take a while to develop the expansion that is normally seen in large cal...

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.