plant/animal reference) to get a bigger picture
Cornet Bay team photo 2009 |
Cornet Bay team at work |
Blue Heron canoe |
Caprellid amphipod |
Mass of caprellid amphipods |
Melibe |
Heather Leahy-Mack led a team of four people and one Labrador retriever at Cornet Bay on July 21st. This is a soft sediment beach near the Deception Pass Bridge and has been a bit barren for the past couple of years after construction of a nearby boat ramp seemed to impact the area. This year however, lush eelgrass beds covered the lower intertidal and were teeming with caprellid amphipods (skeleton shrimp). Caprellids somewhat resemble praying mantises but move about inchworm fashion. The word that captures the essence of these tiny threadlike crustaceans most accurately is “strange”. The team also discovered a large and apparently well fed lion nudibranch (Melibe leonina) among the eelgrass. While most nudibranchs have a radula that they use to scrape food from the substrate, Melibe has a hood-like structure that it uses like a net to capture small prey including caprellid amphipods. One other great find was that of the 
long armed brittle star, Amphiodia occidentalis.
As the team finished up, they began hearing a haunting flute melody. As it turned out, the music was part of the send off for a group of three adults and several young people from the Duwamish and other tribes who were setting out on a tribal journey in a large canoe named the Blue Heron. The group got the canoe in the water, sang their paddling song, said a prayer to the spirits, and then pushed off to begin their journey. They told us they planned to paddle around the Deception Pass area for a day and then head up into the San Juan Islands.
long armed brittle star, Amphiodia occidentalis.As the team finished up, they began hearing a haunting flute melody. As it turned out, the music was part of the send off for a group of three adults and several young people from the Duwamish and other tribes who were setting out on a tribal journey in a large canoe named the Blue Heron. The group got the canoe in the water, sang their paddling song, said a prayer to the spirits, and then pushed off to begin their journey. They told us they planned to paddle around the Deception Pass area for a day and then head up into the San Juan Islands.