plant/animal reference) to get a bigger picture
Hemigrapsus oregonensis |
Clammers |
Moon snail egg collar |
Taking a profile reading |
Recording data |
Look at that! |
Coupeville Town Park Beach monitoring team photo 2008 |
Twelve folks hiked down the trail to monitor at Coupeville Town Park Beach on June 7th; five were veteran monitors but for the rest, this was their first beach monitoring experience. It was a great day for learning and thankfully, for the first day all week, it didn't rain! The worms took center stage for this team. They saw
flatworms, purple and green ribbon worms (Paranemertes perigriana and Emplectonema gracile), and polychaetes with a large Hemipodus stealing the show when it everted its club-like proboscis to the point it appeared to be turning itself inside out. John Purcell was amazed by the countless number of shore crabs (Hemigrapsus oregonensis) hiding under the rocks. Skagit County BW coordinator Adria Banks came along for the day and identified a moon snail egg collar. This was the weekend when Washington regulations allowed clamming without a shellfish license and with the very low tides, lots of folks hit the beach. There was a real crowd of clammers at this beach. Sadly, many of them were not refilling the holes where they had been digging, smothering other organisms located under the piles of excavated sand and creating dangerous holes for others to twist an ankle in.