Thursday, July 17, 2014

Underneath the docks at the Barking Crab

During class on 7/13/14, we were instructed to break into groups and look at a section of a dock behind the Barking Crab, I was a part of Team Barnacles with Stephanie and Cathrine.
We, as Team Barnacles, chose to explore an area of the dock that was in the shade.  We saw a vast amount of plant life and animal life, and for our assignment we decided to focus on 16 plants/animals that we thought we could identify.  The first very noticeable plant that I would like to discuss is the deep green leaf that attaches itself to the side of the dock. 
It seemed to resemble lettuce, and after much research we decided that it is Ulva Lactuca.  We also noticed this red/orange plant that grew on the dock, and under the dock.  After scraping some of it off and into a cup we noticed that it seemed to have a porous and spongy quality.
After much talk of what it could be, we agreed on the Velvety Red Sponge. Also in the picture above is what seems to be a "fluffy tree", as Stephanie called them.  After looking through the guide book, we decided that it is a Frilled Anemone.  We also noticed a longer plant, that seemed to be pinkish in color.
We came to the conclusion that it is a Wine-glass Hydroid, since it was pinkish brown in color, and was fluffy and long. Next, we noticed two types of seaweed, which are in the picture below.
The seaweed that is located above my hand is thought to be Fucaceae. We also believe that the seaweed located below my hand is Knotted Wrack Seaweed.  Then we noticed the mussels that have attached themselves to the dock.
They are Blue Mussels, and when we looked at one of the mussels more closely, we noticed a somewhat orange colored plant that looked similar to a honey-comb, which we decided was a Golden Star Tunicate.
We then noticed a little creature that was sitting on one of the mussels we took out of the water to look at.  We placed the animal in a cup of water and examined the organism and decided it resembled a shrimp of some sort.  
Then we added some plant life in the water, which the animal seemed to respond to as it began swimming around more.  We also noticed that more shrimp like creatures were attached to the plant life that we added in the cup.
 We decided that these little shrimp are Hyallela Azteca. Then there was another organism in the cup that was on a piece of plant life.  It almost looked like a stick, and seemed to be able to bend due to 5 joint like sections on its body.
It looked like a Smooth Skeleton Shrimp, it is located in the picture above on the left-hand side of the cup. We also saw a lot of barnacles that we identified as Thatched Barnacles. After we were done exploring the side of the dock, we got to explore the animals that were caught in a lobster cage.
We decided that the crab seen in the picture above is a Jonah Crab. We also saw another type of crab that we decided was a Common Spider Crab. Also, the jellyfish that the Common Spider Crab is eating, that we saw floating around in the water as well is a Moon Jellyfish.
There were also lobsters that we thought could be Northern Lobsters.
 Lastly, we saw a starfish that happened to get caught in the lobster cage.  We decided it was an  Asteroid Sea Star.

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