#tidepool animals

[kazenorth]

Up next: The Clown Nudibranch!

[kahuna-64]

🌊🌊🌊🌊

[organicmatter]

A member of Actiniid Sea Anemones (Family Actiniidae)

photo by me

[ancientfishposting]

went tidepooling with a few non-marine bio people and one of them picked up a hermit crab, stood up to full height with it, and just. dropped it on the ground. like what the hell man that lil guy was just minding his own business why are you tossing him around for no reason

[twice-lit-sky]

[thatsleepymermaid]

Any vets out there that took a non-traditional path? I'm thinking of taking a few years in-between to finish a few classes and gain experience.

Any advice is welcome as all the veterinarians I know went directly after undergrad and have been no help.

[lightningspam-photography]

Pacific Purple Sea Urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus)

taken in Crescent Bay in California

status: not evaluated

These spiny creatures live along the Pacific coast from Baja California up to Vancouver Island and can often be found in hoards like this.

[rattyexplores]

Bivalves! and their many forms

Although to many people these are nothing more than pretty shells, the truth of the matter, is that these were once all individual animals. Very primitive animals mind you.

Spondylus nicobaricus

Genus Lamarcka

Genus Gafrarium

Genus Spondylus

Genus Lioconcha

Barbatia amygdalumtostum

Family Pinnidae

15/06/22

[oh-sturg-art]

Day 26 of Fishuary! Can you believe there’s only three days left?

Prompt: Tidepool

—

Sticking with my theme of ‘if it’s Fishuary it has to be a fish.’

Oligocottus maculosus, tidepool sculpins, are so funny to me. Their heads are HUGE and shaped like a triangle, sorta serpentine almost.

These guys remember where they live! After tide comes in, they can return to their residential tidepool even after six months of being displaced! Similarly to arapaima and gar species, they are bimodal breathers, capable of breathing in oxygen from the surface of the water when necessary!

[dragongoddessoffate]

Sea hares from tidepooling

[kazenorth]

🟢 The Dusky Nembrotha! 🟢

[kahuna-64]

🌊🌊🌊🌊

[chaitaes]

Summer beach time fun C:

[bug-buddiest]

[headspace-hotel]

I want to make people see how much has been taken away from them.

Did you know that there are dozens of species of fireflies, and some of them light up with a blue glow? Did you know about the moths? There are thousands of them, bright pink and raspberry orange and checkerboard and emerald. They are called things like Black-Etched Prominent, Purple Fairy, Pink-Legged Tiger, Small Mossy Glyph and Black-Bordered Lemon.

Did you know that there are moths that feed on lichens? Did you know about the blue and green bees? The rainbow-colored dogbane beetles? Your streams are supposed to teem with newts, salamanders, crawdads, frogs, and fishes. I want to take you by the hand and show you an animal you've never seen before, and say, "This exists! It's real! It's alive!"

There are secret wildflowers that no website will show you and that no list entitled "native species to attract butterflies!" will name. Every day I'm at work I see a new plant I didn't know existed.

The purple coneflowers and prairie blazing star are a tidepool, a puddle, and there is an ocean out there. There are wildflowers that only grow in a few specific counties in a single state in the United States, there are plants that are evolved specifically to live underneath the drip line of a dolomite cliff or on the border of a glade of exposed limestone bedrock. Did you know that different species of moss grow on the sides of a boulder vs. on top of it?

There are obscure trees you might have never seen—Sourwood, Yellowwood, Overcup Oak, Ninebark, Mountain Stewartia, Striped Maple, American Hophornbeam, Rusty Blackhaw, Kentucky Coffeetree. There are edible fruits you've never even heard of.

And it is so scary and sad that so many people live and work in environments where most of these wondrous living things have been locally extirpated.

There are vast tracts of suburb and town and city and barren pasture where a person could plausibly never learn of the existence of the vast majority of their native plants and animals, where a person might never imagine just how many there are, because they've only ever been exposed to the tiny handful of living things that can survive in a suburb and they have no reason to extrapolate that there are ten thousand more that no one is talking about.

It's like being a fish that has lived its whole life in a bucket, with no way of imagining the ocean. The insects in your field guide are a fraction of those that exist, of all the native plants to your area only a handful can be bought in a nursery.

Welcome to the Earth! It's beautiful! It's full of life! More things are real and beautiful and alive than a single person could imagine!!!

[echidnana]

stares at shadow. what Are we