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Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2020 5:28 pm
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 8:46 am
by Jan K
Lagoon Point November 6. Swimming over the muck I came across a pair of Opalescent nudibranchs. They are quite common in our waters. In the "old days", Opalescent covered slugs from the Mexican border to Alaska and beyond. Then came the realization that they are actually two different animals. One without a white stripe (among other, less obvious differences) on their cerata, kept the common name Opalescent and changed the scientific name to H.opalescens while changing the common name of the slug with white stripes to Thick-horned nudibranch , keeping the scientific H.crassicornis. Well, going through my archive of pictures, Lagoon Point canal had both of them one time or other.
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 9:51 am
by Jan K
These two Hermissendas encounters in Lagoon Point are going back to 2006.
So the geography overlaps predate the recent big warming of the ocean explanation...
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2020 10:43 am
by Jan K
Langley Harbor. Adding new critter to my list. Giant flatworm not the most exciting find,
but I am always happy to find something I never seen before
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2020 4:10 pm
by Jan K
November 15. Quick stop at Keystone. I miss diving here. My last dive here was on October 3rd !
Meanwhile, the American Construction Company keeps up dredging stuff on one side of the jetty and depositing it on the other...
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2020 4:25 pm
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2020 10:53 am
by Jan K
Langley Harbor. One out of the three Whitespotted greenling males already finished his guard duty, two are still busy chasing other fish away.
One of them is sporting open wound as a testament to the challenging job of protecting the eggs from predators ...
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2020 8:34 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2020 9:22 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2020 10:13 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2020 7:11 am
by oldsalt
Jan: I delight in your diving Driftwood Ponds. You don't have to fight the crowds and decompression is easy. The diversity of life you find there amazes me. To quote Yogi Berra, "You can see a lot just by looking." But you have to look.
-Curt
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2020 12:44 pm
by Jan K
Yes Curt, we have to look. But with old eyes, it gets more difficult with every passing birthday ...
White Bubble Shell slugs. Many, many of them crawling over everything, grazing on filamentous algae and diatoms. Looking at them in the pond, they look like omnivores, I have seen them on seaweed, bryozoans, wood, clams, rocks, even on the discarded toilet
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2020 8:00 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2020 9:15 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2020 12:05 pm
by Dominick Gheesling
LOVE these posts!!!
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2020 7:45 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2020 1:55 pm
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2020 12:28 pm
by Jan K
Thanksgiving weekend. The dredging stopped for the holiday and the Keystone was quiet. I decided to check how the Pilings, which are outside of the working area look with all the tailings piled up on the nearby beach. For once, the swim from the beach to the old wharf is not anymore a hassle. The Bull kelp forest is gone, most of the stipes lay on the seafloor in a tangled mess providing plenty of food for the Northern kelp crabs. Unfortunately, the area under the old wharf is not anymore the beautiful oasis of marine life. Gone are the schools of rockfish which were a constant residents here, now few Tubesnouts swim around, hardly. The octopus moved out, fewer anemones and Feather duster worms. The dredging is not to blame for it, I think the winter storm took toll on the area, as it is quite shallow and with so many piling now broken off and missing, the waves scoured the bottom too much for providing comfortable environment for much of the critters. Somehow I got distracted and ended up at the jetty.
Well, I expected it to be worse. I can't see much difference from time before the dredging. Yes, with the Bull kelp gone it looks naked, but the die off is an annual event and hopefully it will grow back. Silt was covering lots of stuff before, so hard to tell. I did not see any of the giant Lingcod, but that too seems to be the norm. Schools of Striped seaperch are now back, the school of rockfish at the end of jetty are there still. Visibility was decent until the ferry arrived, same store as before. Since I had a long swim back to the Pilings, my visit to the jetty was short. Wrinkled dogwinkle are gathering in great numbers to make more dogwinkles.
The good news is that the drop from the new parking level to the beach is nowhere as high as it was after the last dredging, shovel work will be minimal...
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2020 6:19 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 6:51 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2020 11:57 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2020 10:12 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2020 7:43 pm
by Jan K
Attention fellow nudibranch enthusiasts! It is time again to write yet another name change into our guide books.
I don't know the common name for this "new" Tritonia exsulans since this slug does not sport the diamond-like lines on its back.
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 5:25 pm
by Jan K
Well, all this excitement about new name for Tritonia festiva ? I hope you did not write in the new name into your guidebook with pen. In view of continuing discoveries and revisions, I suggest we all stick with pencil #2 so we can correct it again. The change we need to do now is to replace the Pink tritonia new old name with newer new name. When I first ID that large pink slug, it was going by the name of Tritonia diomedea. Then they changed it to its maiden name of Tritonia tetraquetra. There was some fuzz about the change, since the T.diomedea was appearing in so many publications due to it being use in research, so that where the page from 2013 I used in this announcement came from. It didn't take long and we have to get used to Tritonia exsulans. I dont think I will try too hard to memorized it. With its history, she will probably marry again and change name again.
As for the Tritonia festiva ? Same name for the one with markings on back as the one without them, color variations we chalk up to food, as with other slugs. So relax and go back to worry about the Covid-19...
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2020 3:59 pm
by Jan K
And to wrap up the taxonomy hoopla on lighter note: