Yesterday, I was helping a fellow graduate student replace the recruitment collectors she had drilled to the rocks just outside the marine lab. The purpose of these is to collect the very tiny mussel larvae that would be settling on the rock to begin their development into adults. The collectors are small dish sponges called tuffys, about six inches in diameter, and we replaced five of them just below the mussel beds she is studying.
A tuffy dish scrubber. Image from Google images.
Changing the tuffys wasn't the cool part, though (okay, it was kinda cool, but not the subject of this post). After we were done, we explored the local intertidal area a bit, trying to identify all the species present. I am still so overwhelmed by the diversity of organisms in this habitat. I had an eye out for whelks, of course, and we found a few with some nice stripes, as they usually have. After looking a bit closer, though, we found a snail with the coolest design I have ever seen! Instead of stripes, it had checkers!
*Partnership for the Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans. www.piscoweb.org
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