Whidbey Island Critters

[Jan K]

Amazing little fish, can live in fresh and salt water, I find them as lone fish at Lagoon Point and schooling at Keystone.

[LCF]

Very cool information, Jan! I'll have to keep my eyes peeled for those mostly-buried crabs.

[Jan K]

When our fellow NW Diver Greg Jensen asked for help to identify Dungeness crab incubating areas, I took a much closer look at my backyard here on Whidbey where I saw in the past crabs burying themselves, but thought that they were the soft shells after molting, hiding from predators. Greg description of what is also happening helped me open another chapter of my understanding of the underwater world. Thanks Greg! Please note, that the egg pictures on the third panel are from a two dead crabs I found, not victims of my picture taking. I have no idea what killed them, that is probably another chapter..

[LCF]

OOOOH . . . I spotted one of those on our James Island dive in the San Juans in early October, but nobody got nearly as good a picture of it as you got of this one! They're really beautiful in person, even without the benefit of a macro lens.

[Jan K]

Added another slug to my Whidbey Island list

[Jan K]

Thank you for kind words LCF.
And now back to the Soap Opera: " All my (Whidbey) children".

[LCF]

Jan, lovely photographs as usual, and educational as you so often are.

Thank you so much for continuing to create and post these pages.

[Jan K]

In the murky waters of Holmes Harbor I found two slugs in the close proximity, one is the hunter which uses its hood like a fishing throw net to catch small crustacea living on the blades, while the Dendronotus iris, or Giant Nudibranch is more famous for attacking Tube-dwelling Anemones, here on the Eel Grass it is using its teeth on hydroids..

[Jan K]

The Cabezon was not about let its "Gunnel on the Stick" snack go when I found the two on Langley Tire Reef yesterday :

[Seth T.]

Ha! Awesome!

[Sounder]

Now THAT'S funny!!!

[Jan K]

There are two ends to the Giant Sea Cucumber .
The front :


And the rear :

[Jan K]

I did not see what the trap was baited with, but it sure attracted plenty of dinner guests..

[Tom Nic]

Very clear, and VERY interesting! Janna, any thoughts?!

[Jan K]

It was very interesting to watch. Here is another shot, it shows how the star is hesitant to "touch down" the arms facing the sea pens while all the others are in normal, down position. Sorry about the quality of the picture.

[Tom Nic]

Wow. Now THERE'S a study begging to be done and a paper begging to be written!

[Jan K]

I dove a new site on Whidbey yesterday, rather uninspiring underwater topography with not much cover sea life -Current swept sandy slope with patches of empty clam shells and gravel. Searching for critter to photograph, I came upon an area with many very small, juvenile Orange Sea Pens. Large Sunflower Star in its usual fashion was moving speedily over the sand approaching the Sea pens. I was curious to see what will happen when the two creatures meet. One is well know predator which even eats its own species and the other a gentle filter feeder, much, much smaller size. I expected the Sea pen bury itself in sand and hope for best, since the Sunflower star has no difficulty digging up clams buried way down under the sand. Well, was I in for a surprise. Not only the Sea pen did not panic and bury itself, it stood up and the Sunflower Star stopped in its track!. As you all know when watching “Pycnopodia” marching across the seafloor, it is all legs. When it came close to the tiny pen, the tube feet retracted and the arm of the star reared up, without even touching the pen. I saw it repeated again and again when the star moved sideways and encountering the other sea pens in the group. It did not crawl over them as I expected. The sea star was obviously stopped by some thing coming from the sea pen, but not visible to my eyes, it was not transmitted via touch... The Sunflower star then gingerly moved away from the sea pens. ...

[LCF]

One of the things I love about your pictures is that they make me aware of creatures I may very well have looked past, or not even noticed. I'll have to look for the slime worms from now on!

[Jan K]

I took the liberty of turning the photo upside down and adding little bit of Hollywood to the scene - the way the blobs of worms wiggle and shake when you swim by, could give you creepy feeling if it wasn't a sunny day yesterday ..

[Jan K]

Was he actually sleeping, or did you just catch him with his eyes closed?!

The reason I depicted this GPO as sleeping was that unlike other encounters with GPOs, when they move a little and change colors when I move around taking pictures, this one just sit there, and was in the same location and posture almost one hour later when I checked on him at the end of dive. And no, he wasn't dead

[Tom Nic]

Was he actually sleeping, or did you just catch him with his eyes closed?!

Very cool, as always Jan!

[Jan K]

Jan,
I'm surprised you didn't do a Halloween cartoon...something like your christmas card... Kirsten

Kirsten, I got caught up in diving and work.. So here is one from the past..

[Scubak]

Jan,
I'm surprised you didn't do a Halloween cartoon...something like your christmas card...
no worries though, your pics are wonderful as always.
I sent the link to this thread to my friend, whose 6 year old son is just now "discovering" the ocean and sea "pickles"... :)
Thanks so much. I want to order him one of your books and ship to him for a suprise...
Thanks so much.

Kirsten

[Jan K]

Octopus Lullaby

[Sounder]

How long do you have to wait, sitting in one spot to observe this type of behavior. I see critters all the time, however I cannot predict what it is they are up to. This is truly amazing footage of nature at its best!

Once you recognize potential predator - prey encouter, hunker down and let nature perform. Some plays are longer then others, sometimes nothing happens - so dive often

I love this philosophy. Such wisdom.