Algae and medusae

Spring is still lagging behind, predictably. I went out this morning to find Crepidula eggs to hatch for experiments, and although the eggs are there, they aren't anywhere near hatching. So back to waiting and trying to farm eggs in the lab.

Stuff is definitely happening in the field, though. Most notable since my last trip was a serious explosion of macroalgae. This site is full of really thick growths of large algae through the late spring and early summer, until it gets really hot. The algae is sort of a pain -- it's probably two inches deep to wade through and covers the snails that I'm looking for. At least I was out in boots today, because walking through two inches of algae in my sandals is a little icky.

A thick bed of algae on the beach. Normally there's just sand and small cobbles here.
The small 'creek' that has been created by flowing water allows you to see just how thick the mat is.

I did find some snail eggs from other species, including this nifty sand collar.

A sand collar, or moon snail egg mass.

But by far the coolest thing I saw today was a jellyfish (species unknown). I noticed something funny-looking floating in ALL OF THE ALGAE and at first I just thought it was a dead Chondrus or something. Lots of the algae turns white when it dies. But this seemed to be weirdly radially symmetrical and, upon further inspection, to have tentacles.

Lucky I had my rubber gloves, because I do usually draw the line at handling unidentified jellies.

Jellyfish!

I was surprised to see this guy so early in the season. The jellies get super-abundant around here by August, but are pretty rare in May. It's also unusual at this particular site to see them washed near shore, though other places I work they are pretty common.

Scyphozoan jellies have a totally awesome life cycle. It has two basic stages: the medusa form (think typical jellyfish) and the polyp form (think sea anemone, to which they are related). A medusa makes gametes that turn into a larva, which grown into a polyp, which then buds into little medusae. Sound complicated? It sort of is. Here's a picture to help.

Life cycle of a scyphozoan. Photo from Wikipedia, with more details.

My favorite part of this life cycle is strobilation, step 11 in the figure above. Here's a fabulous video. And another one. Something that doesn't come across in the not-to-scale diagram but does in the video is just how small the polyps and strobilae are. They really are fascinating. I haven't ever seen a strobila in the field, but it's on my invert life-list.

For today, though, I'll settle for an adult scyphozoan. And maybe some larval Crepidula, if that's not too much to ask for.

Today's jelly, adrift in the algae. 

Science reading 1: Lazy Point

And now for something completely different. No new pictures this week, but I thought I would honor a request: the lovely Carolyn, a high school acquaintance of mine and the literary blogger at Rosemary and Reading Glasses, would like recommendations and reviews of science books.

As it happens, popular science books are among my favorites, so I'm happy to oblige. When I got the request, though, I wasn't quite sure where to start. Aldo Leopold? Rachel Carson? or newer authors like Carl Zimmer and David Quammen? or Stephen Jay Gould? or Neil Shubin? Hopefully I'll get to all of these and more.

But to start, someone who is a contemporary Ph.D. scientist and conservation activist, as well as a relatively prolific writer, filmmaker, and compelling speaker: Carl Safina. Dr. Safina got his Ph.D. at Rutgers studying the ecology of seabirds, and since then has become one of the most public advocates for seabirds, marine mammals, fish, and the marine realm in general. He's also got an appointment at Stony Brook, and I've been fortunate enough to hear his talks and take a course he co-taught in science communication.

Dr. Safina has written several books, and his first, Song for the Blue Ocean, is supposed to be quite stunning. I say 'supposed to be' because my copy is sitting on my bookshelf, embarrassingly untouched. I can wholeheartedly recommend his Eye of the Albatross, in which he travels to an albatross colony in the northwest Hawaiian islands to study the world's largest seabirds.

Those of you familiar with A Sand County Almanac may
recognize the general zeitgeist of the cover of the paperback edition.

But the book I want to talk about today is one of his most recent, The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World. The structure of this book is based on an ecological classic, A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. Safina goes month by month through the year, discussing the natural world around his house. I was drawn into the book in part because the locations he describes and the animals he sees are very close to my house, but I don't think that would be a deterrent for anyone, no matter how far from Montauk you might be.

One of the scenes that has stayed with me in the years since I read this is the one where the author encounters poachers of horseshoe crabs. He does an excellent job describing the horror of these crabs being taken en masse, but also explains the economics and politics behind why this happens, as well as the ecological consequences (beyond the mortality to the crabs, there are potential consequences to seabird species that depend on their eggs). It is this description that I return to each time I am out on the shore and fortunate enough to see a female crab buried in the sand.

Interspersed with these snapshots from Lazy Point are chapters where Safina travels to the tropics, the poles, Alaska, and so on to see the global consequences of human impacts on the ecological world. The result is the impression that everything that we do to affect the planet matters, both close to home and far away (even in seemingly untouched, pristine habitats). To quote from the opening pages:

So this story is also about the tension created when those things mistakenly called the "real world" -- though they are entirely artificial -- continually intrude on the real real world. In a real place, the mysteries of ages pile on thick with enduring truths and complex beauties. 

There is no place, in other words, that is safe from our influence, and no place without its own natural beauty. And later, in those same opening pages, while contemplating migrating seabirds, where they go, where they have been:

They all remind me that the world is both much bigger than Lazy Point, and yet surprisingly small. "I have traveled a great deal in Concord," reported Henry David Thoreau. And how much greater he might have thought his travels if he'd lived at Lazy Point instead. The coast and its migrants bring to Lazy Point a much bigger picture than any map of the place suggests. I sometimes tell friends it's possible to see the whole world in the view from Lazy Point.

 We are all interconnected with the natural world, and our actions have consequences far away from where we can see. It is a familiar narrative, but the details in this book drive it home.