My findings

The dock exercises actually taught me a lot of new things.  I learned that there is so much life near and under the docks and that the weird scary looking green stuff stuck to the dock is not actually creepy but is very beautiful and filled with life.  The following is a list of all of the plants that I saw:

1.  There was a green plant that looked exactly like lettuce.  I later found that the name of this plant is Ulva Lactuca.

2.  The second plant I saw was bright red.  This plant felt very soft even though the texture of it looked somewhat rough.  It didn't protrude from the dock, it sort of just created  a coat over the dock under the other plants.  We later found this red stuff to be velvety red sponge.

3.  Then I saw what looked like a bee's honey comb.  It was somewhat brown and had many holes inside of it.  The holes were layered with a black covered ring.  After carefully examining this object, we confirmed it to be a Golden Star Tunicate.

4.  I also observed seaweed with some type of pods at the ends.  We were able to identify this to be  Fucaceae. 

5. I thought I noticed clams under the dock.  They were actually Blue Mussels.

6.  My favorite was a little broccoli looking thing.  It was brown and had black frills with white tips.  I love it because once you touch it, it contracts and sort of tucks in.  I was literally like a small child playing with this broccoli like thing.  After examining my guide, I recognized it to be a frilled anemone.

7.  Through our experiences, we were able to recognize some barnacles.  However, after looking at the guide, I realized that there are several types of barnacles.  The one we saw was actually a Thatched Barnacle.

The  next group is a list of the animals we saw:

1.  At the dock, we scooped up some of the above mentioned plants and noticed small tiny shrimp like animals swimming around in the cup.  These shrimp like things were about .5 mm and were brown and white striped.  We identified those to be Hyallela aztecas.

2.  There was also a stick guy....as we like to call it.  It was about 2-5 mm in length with two antennas and was almost transparent.  we later identified the stick guy to be a smooth skeleton shrimp, although we still like calling it "the stick guy".

3.  We found several Moon Jellyfish.

4. Of course we saw a few beautiful lobsters.  They were Northern Lobsters.

5.  There were also 2 crabs that were caught on the trap.  One seemed to be more of an orangish red color, while the other one was quite hideous.  It looked like a rock or looked like it had been dragged through the mud.  The ugly one was a Common spider crab and the other one was a Jonah Crab.

This experience was a great one and I learned a lot about the beautiful life in our city.

Stephanie