plant/animal reference) to get a bigger pictureSunlight Beach team photo 2010 | Yellow sand verbena | Team at work |
Kristen with moonsnail | Moonsnail |
Sunlight Beach was one of two beaches monitored on a very rainy Saturday May 29th. Kristen Cooley assembled a team of 5 to check out that very broad sandy stretch. Four bald eagles and three great blue herons were there to greet the team as they arrived for the day. The backshore of this beach has a nice variety of plants including yellow sand verbena, beach pea, sea rocket, and Elymus mollis, the native dunegrass. Further out they identified moonglow anemones (Anthopleura artemisia), Japanese and native eelgrass, sand dollars (Dendraster excentricus), butter clams, and a plainfin midshipman found when a large piece of wood was tipped up. Two live moonsnails were seen along with numerous egg collars and clam shells with the distinctive moonsnail drill holes The moonsnail victims included several non-native purple varnish clams. There was a diverse community of polychaete worms found including species from the Glyceridae, Maldanidae, Oweniidae, Onuphidae, Capitellidae, and Chaetoperidaye families. As the team wrapped up their work and headed back to their cars, half a dozen Canada geese gave them a send off with a fly by.
