sea butterfly ~ 07/16/14 ~ Asilomar Beach

pseudoconch of the sea butterfly

Corolla spectabilis

Given my fondness for butterflies, I did not, however, make up the name.  There were a handful of these firm, flexible, and bumpy clear things washed up along the tide line.  It resembles and actually fit like one of those rubber finger tips that old school secretaries used to file paperwork.  I liken finding the pseudoconch similar to finding an empty snail shell.  Online pictures of the animal itself make no sense to me.  Click the scientific name above for an excellent diver's summary with gorgeous photos.  Apparently, the sea butterfly is more closely related to the sea hare than the floating sea snail.  Go figure.  Marine life is such an alien world to me.

ps 10/09/16 - Apparently these don't seem to have a particular season.  Andy and I went out to Asilomar today and found numerous sea butterfly carcasses on the beach.

Pacific sea nettle ~ 11/25/13 ~ Coast Guard Pier

Pacific sea nettle

Chrysaora fuscescens

The sea nettles have been in great abundance near the shore this past month.  Their sudden appearance seems kind of random, as I've also seen large numbers in the middle of summer.  I wonder if they passively float along with the water currents, or if they actively follow food.  I wouldn't want to be a surfer or a scuba diver, because some days there are so many nettles that I imagine it would be impossible to avoid getting stung, at least on exposed hands.  Being the land lover that I am, I generally don't pay much attention to them, but they are kind of pretty in a brown sort of way. When they die, they turn a ghostly white and tend to sink (didn't get a good picture of this).  I've watched western gulls and opal eye awkwardly try to eat them.  I realized this morning that I hadn't really looked up information yet, and I was interested to see how different aquariums present their online information (sea nettles are apparently relatively easy to keep in captivity): Monterey Bay Aquarium, Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco, National Aquarium in Baltimore.  I have to say I've been impressed with the improvements MBA has made to their site over the past few years.

sea gooseberry ~ 05/28/13 ~ Asilomar Beach

sea gooseberry

Pleurobrachia bachei

These looked very much like glass cat's eye marbles scattered across the sand.  Since we had no idea what these were, we simply called them "jelly beach marbles."  And, that's exactly what I typed in to start my internet search for an ID.  It seems there are plenty of other folks who are wondering what the heck these common little blobs are, too, but there's so much misinformation around, calling them fish eggs (wrong), baby jellyfish (wrong), to salps (wrong, again). Sea gooseberries are a type of comb jelly, aka ctenophore, different than jellyfish and the myriad of other gelatinous animals. There are several spp. of Pleurobrachia found around the world. Fellow bloggers Jessica Winder @ Jessica's Nature Blog and Phil @ Cabinet of Curiosities have some nice pictures of P. pileus found across the pond.  For stunning feeding photos of P. bachei and a gnarly Beroe sp. (another comb jelly), check out Merry at ScubaBoard.com.

Usually, I avoid touching anything jelly-like on the beach for fear of being stung.  This time my curiosity got the better of me.  I poked one and discovered it didn't hurt at all (well, at least not me).  In my attempts to get the lighting and focus just right for a picture (er, 98 pictures!), I managed to smoosh one in my fingers.  Poor thing.  It's very liquidy.  Next time, I'd like to plop a couple into a jar to see them move.  And for those like me who didn't know, especially since local native gooseberries look nothing like this, here's what a traditional gooseberry is.

floating sea snail ~ 03/29/12 ~ Coast Guard Pier

a floating sea snail

Carinaria japonica (aka Carinaria cristata japonica)

for more information

posted 05/12/12 - It's thanks to Neil's (one who has many online profiles) comment on my previous salps post that I got a lead on the ID of this marine snail. Since it's such a different animal, I've moved it to its own post. And guess what? It eats salps. It was buffet day for this fantastic purple-lipped Carinaria. I had a good time looking for information on this little known animal. Make sure to check out the embedded links above in the ID for informative sites. Very cool. Thanks, Neil!

salps ~ 03/29/12 ~ Coast Guard Pier

salps
Salpa spp.
Family Salpidae

posted 05/07/12 - The strangest creatures get washed into the area between the Monterey Coast Guard Pier/breakwater and the boating gas station near the Monterey Bay Boatworks. I was told by one of the guys on a large fishing vessel that these were jellyfish eggs. I don't know. There seemed to be 3 different types all at least 2-7" in length: round-oblong with reddish-orange circles, chains of smaller ones with the same reddish-orange circles, and a long fin-like creature with purple lips. All seemed to have moving parts that acted like mouths. Like many jellies that get caught in this area, they were only here for one day, maybe in conjunction with the tide. Can you ID?

ps 05/09/12 - Thanks to the generous comments below, I was able to place a general ID on what I originally posted as unknown jelly-like animals. As I looked up information, I added additional photos to show the variety I found. Plus, I'm moving the purple-lipped Carinaria sp. to its own new post. Most online pictures and information were done by scuba divers, so it's possible that salps are unusual to find close to the surface and near the shore, even though they're reportedly quite common in the ocean. There were so many that it wasn't too difficult to take pictures. The hardest part was trying to reduce the glare over the water, so I laid flat on my belly leaning over the docks to snap pictures in the shadows. My best guess is that all the ones shown here belong to the family Salpidae, which is a type of tunicate. To be honest, I don't remember ever hearing of these animals before.

As you can see, not all of them are pointy on both ends, so I do not believe all of them are Salpa fusiformis. There were also one-ended points, chains (clones which become sequential hermaphrodites), round with fringed edges, and large tubulars with wide openings on both ends. Notice each has a small compact round, reddish-orange gut, which apparently helps distinguish Salpa from several other Salpidae, such as Helicosalpa virgula? I had difficulty finding specific information, so I wonder if some of these might be Iasis spp. or Weelia spp. My favorite site for these animals is Dave Wrobel's The JelliesZone. And, yes, salps are chordates, so they're more closely related to us than to jellyfish. Wild! As of 2 weeks ago, salps made the news because there were such massive numbers that they clogged an intake screen at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, which is a couple hundred miles southeast of Monterey near Montaña de Oro.

wordless Wednesday

purple-striped jelly ~ 08/05/09 ~ Coast Guard Pier

purple-striped jelly

Chrysaora colorata

posted 11/26/13 - As I was looking up information on Pacific sea nettle this morning, I also discovered the ID of this less common local jellyfish.

sea nettle ~ 08/05/09 ~ Coast Guard Pier

sea nettles
Chrysaora fuscescens

Much to our surprise these jellyfish were still hanging around the Coast Guard Pier more than a week after we first saw them. As is the case with moon jellies, I'll see them one day and then they'll be completely gone the next. I still don't know which kind these are and hope to look them up at some point. Ah, to give credit where credit is due, my husband took these very nice pics. It was a great sunny day!

ps - Thanks to an article in the Monterey Herald on August 12, 2009, I now know these are sea nettles (Chrysaora fuscescens).

pss 09/09/09 - As of September 6, 2009, these jellies are still very numerous around the Coast Guard pier. I've never seen them last so long.

pss 09/25/09 - This past Sunday (9/20/09), we finally noticed the jellies were not as numerous with only 5 spotted near the Coast Guard pier.

pss 08/22/10 - After not seeing many jellyfish since last year, there were tons of them out by the Coast Guard Pier this morning during my regular morning walk. They're smaller this year, maybe about 8" across at the most and very numerous.

jellyfish

You'd think after the MBA's several year exhibit on jellies, I'd be able to identify these. My husband says these are part of the permanent exhibit upstairs. However, I still don't know which ones they are. We see a couple kinds of jellies, usually white moon jellies, from time to time in large numbers near the Coast Guard Pier for a day or two and then they seem to vanish.

jellyfish ~ 06/25/09 ~ Morro Strand Beach

jellyfish

This was a particularly large jellyfish. I liked how we could see the color and tentacles. Here up north on the Monterey beaches, we usually see gelatinous blobs without any definition which I think are moon jellies.