Saturday, July 23, 2011

Exploring the Unknown

Exploring the unknown was a thrilling thing for me to do today. Our group had at list 10-15 different kinds of animals and their may have been 6 different plant life species. I saw many familiar species like mussels, mackerel, herring, star fish, sea lettuce, seaweed and many other kinds of life that we were unable to define. With mussels there was a hard crustacean on some of them and others had a softer side. I saw small very tiny shrimp and even maybe some crabs.

There were several species of worms and I think the killer worm was one. It had tentacles on the top of the head with no eyes and several hundred legs that reminded me of a centipede. There was also several some plant life that was red with a hard crust and yellow substance that was hard to identify. There were many antenna like worms that lived off of the mussel in which they moved constantly. One of our team members held them in her hand and she could feel their movement that felt like little vibrators. There were also some kind of eggs growing in between the mussels. In the middle of the clusters of the mussels there seemed to be some web like hairs growing.

On the other side of the pier there was a white star fish that clung to a wood pole that moved with the slight wave from the water. This could have been a Mud star. There was a log with algae and it had orange barnacles hanging off of it. Some looked the the uvla that is in the back of your throat.

I also saw seaweed that looked like it had long tentacles and I think it was called Italian Seaweed and there was a green seaweed that looked a lot like lettuce. I think it was called Sea Lettuce or Green Seaweed. All in all it was a great day to explore another part of the world that exists in or around the bottom of the sea.


No comments: