Mabana Beach - August 20, 2009

Establishing monitoring line Establishing monitoring line

Extremely gradual beach Extremely gradual beach

Beach Watcher Team Beach Watcher Team

Pete mired in sand Pete mired in sand

Boots sinking! Boots sinking!

Pulling out of sand Pulling out of sand

Led by Barbara B. we had a team of 7 Beach Watchers and one friend, photographer Bill B., hike down to this sandy beach at 9:00 AM to work our way out to a low tide of -1.5 ft. at 11:20 AM. This beach is a very long, gradual beach that gets sandier as one goes to low tide, and is noted for capturing our shoes and boots as we plod out. This year was no exception! It is a true tide flat. Because of its long length, we did traverse the middle areas in larger line increments in order to get out to the low tide edge.

Lions mane jelly Lions mane jelly

What was found on this date were many areas of sand with many holes among it; however, only one ghost shrimp was found during numerous bivalve digs, although the group felt they might have been the makers of these holes. The small commensurate clam, Cryptomya californica, was plentiful in the bivalve digs. A beautiful jelly, a Lions mane (Cyanea capillata), was found just outside of our 20 ft. line width, and also dungeness crab, several of which were totally buried in the sand. Overall, fewer species were found than in former years. Notably reduced to just a few small ones were the sand dollars. It was speculated that fewer ghost shrimp might be attributed to warmer days and it is certain that less food available means fewer gray whales will be feeding at this beach in the spring.

Barbara collected our Beach Watcher back data in an effort to look at trends for this beach. As discussed by our group that day, probably the most notable thing was the absence of a larger number of species previously noted, and a seeming decrease in other species. While no conclusions were drawn, Barbara expressed that there is a need to standardize the taking of water temperature and salinity readings (reading done an exact distance from start point) to see if there is any correlation between these and species depletion.
Thanks to Barbara for hosting the final gathering afterwards and Bill B. for his much appreciated photography. Co-written by Barbara B. and Judi McD.