YellowEye wrote:What stressed behavior did you notice? The only off thing I noticed was the cali seacumbers I uploaded a pic of and also the squat lobsters looked a bit less skiddish than usual. But I've only dove sund a few times.
What I saw was not uniform in terms of all of the members of that species, but certainly specific to a few. initially I didn't realize what I was seeing until I started noticing the behaviors over time. Then I was able to start recognizing stressed species more easily.
California Sea Cucumbers - Mouth parts out when they weren't feeding, a few looked "wasted", part of it healthy, part "skinny", a few of them were lying upside down on the silt and not moving. This wasn't just one or two, but quite noticeable once I started looking. And of course some looked perfectly healthy.
Orange Sea Cucumbers - none were feeding, all of them with all of their feeding arms pulled in and only a small part visible, and a couple were all the way out of in the open, just "laying" on the bottom.
Plumose - many of them were deflated, looking "sick" (admittedly subjective, but definitely not turgid and feeding.
Rockfish looked fine for the most part, but a few wolf eels were showing signs of stress - i.e. laying in the open, making no effort to withdraw or move away, and more of them visible than typical.
In the full blown events in the past wolfies will be all over the place, seeming to "gasp" or work harder to breath, and be very lethargic. I've seen almost 20 full grown decorated Warbonnets in the shallows, in the open, working hard to push water over their gills and not moving away when approached. Normally the Warbonnets are skittish, very well hidden, and I'm lucky to see one or two on a dive. Rockfish will be "sandwiched" at certain depths where it seems that O2 levels are the best and will be seen almost nowhere else, with the same "gasping" behavior. I've even seen them concentrate in top 10fsw and be near the surface. As I mentioned before I've seen adult Yelloweye that are
never seen at these depths just hanging out at 40 fsw or so.
I've seen dead Plainfin Midshipman - a dozen or so on one dive that simply couldn't breathe and died.
Some species are hugely susceptible and are either dead or dieing. My list is nowhere near comprehensive.
The first couple times I saw this I'd drop into 20-30 fsw and be surrounded by critters and start taking pictures and think "cool, they're letting me shoot!", then as I realized what was happening it was like...
I still will take pictures when I find them like this but I'm also extra careful to stress them as little as possible.
On the one hand these events are "normal" for Hood Canal because of tide and waterflow issues, but there are some who think they are exacerbated by man made erosion, run off, septic, etc.
[url=https://flic.kr/p/pBPTn9]
