Plastic sand is NOT a sand I would collect except to throw it away. Look at how we humans are destroying things for all the other living things on the planet. I can't wait to see this movie when it comes out later this year.
Trailer for the new documentary Midway, coming out later this year. Really beautiful photography that is shocking. A must watch. http://vimeo.com/midway/midwayfilm
It didn't have a way for me to embed it, so go to that link to watch it first.
Monday night I had the pleasure of volunteering to help out with murre research. Actually I was interpreting to the public while the others watched them through the scopes, and when there weren't people there to talk to I took lots of pictures and watched the excitement through binoculars. I love getting to talk to people so that was fun, although I felt bad that I was often asked questions I didn't have the answer to since I was completely new to murres (aside from the one introduction I had to them my first week, on June 20th's blog post at the bottom.)
Apparently I chose the most exciting time to come. There was a constant string of disturbances the entire time I was there. A disturbance was explained to me as an event where a larger bird comes in and scares murres away and sometimes tries to eat them (as in when a bald eagle will come to eat an adult, the others scatter, and sea gulls come in and snatch up all the eggs). At this point the chicks had all hatched but were too small to fledge (leave the colony).
Instead of bald eagles though, it was juvenille California Brown Pelicans causing all the trouble that night (and could be still happening, which if it does, the rocks may be cleared by the end of the week).
The Pelicans came in and went through this
infuriating (to me) routine of flapping their wings to scare away the
adult murres, and at this point many of the chicks fell down to the
water. All they seemed to be after was to steal whatever fish the
parents had brought to feed their chick. When the murres got scared
they would drop it and the pelican would eat it. Sometimes the pelicans
would eat small chicks, and sea gulls being the opportunists they are
rushed in to eat many chicks with the parents scared away. The pelicans
were also seen swallowing a chick then spitting it back out then
swallowing again and repeating until the chick was dead. I don’t know
what the pelicans got out of this since they didn’t eat these chicks.
Juvenile California Brown Pelicans and Sea Gulls severely thinned out the Common Murre colony
The colony was thinned to a fraction of its original size that night.
It was sad to watch. I also went down to the beach the next day and saw
many dead chicks washed up. Apparently hundreds of them were further
down on the beach.
Day 3 of my internship here at Hatfield Marine Science Center, and it feels like I've been here two weeks, because that's about how much awesomeness and learning I've had, crammed into a very short amount of time!
Today we got to go to Yaquina Head tide pools at low tide which was dang freaking awesome! We climbed all over and saw a lot of neat stuff. On the drive up of course the first thing we saw was the dock washed up from Japan that everyone has been talking about and tourists come to see. It's just sitting down there on the beach.
Dock debris from 2011 Japanese tsunami, Newport Oregon
Yaquina Head lighthouse, Newport Oregon with tide pools in foreground
Now that's some beautiful scenery. I absolutely love the rocky Oregon coast! This area in particular is made of basalt. That means it was formed by volcanic activity - Yaquina Head used to be a volcano. I thought our guide said this was a possible old site of the Yellowstone Caldera, but I can't find any info backing that up, so I could have heard wrong. This site has a good summary of the geology of this location.
Basalt cobbles that give Cobble Beach its name
The beach where you go to the tide pools is called Cobble Beach, because
it's covered with basalt rocks. A local told me that if you come here at
high tide the waves pick up the rocks and as the surf goes in and out it
makes a really neat sound. Hoping to hear that for myself at some point.
Yaquina Head Lighthouse, Newport Oregon
The Yaquina Head lighthouse is the tallest lighthouse in Oregon. You can learn more about this and the Yaquina Bay lighthouses at this website.
Some awesome finds at the tide pools today:
Sea anemones
Barnacles and mussels
The black shells are mussels and the white are barnacles
Rocks covered with mussels and barnacles
Coralline Algae
Fellow Sea Grant Scholar, Brian, showing us coralline algae
Coralline Algae gets is name because of its resemblance to coral
Coralline algae that has been bleached by the sun
Crabs (Red Rock Crab?)
Sea Urchins
Purple sea urchins - look closely, especially in the shadow- there are a bunch
Sea Stars
Sea star in tide pool
Sea stars - the one on the left is eating
Sunflower Sea Star
Sunflower sea star and big red sea urchin- I altered the coloring of the picture so you can see it better
I loved seeing the sunflower sea star, perhaps mainly because I spotted
it on my own. Thanks to Planet Earth, I was familiar with this animal a
little bit from the cool time lapse of it trying to get hold of a brittle star for dinner. Here is the video- it starts out talking about the sea urchins that destroy kelp forests which is also cool.
Mossy Chiton
Chitons look like potato bugs/ pill bugs/ sow bugs/ rolly pollies/ whatever you call them. But Chitons have 8 plates of armor, are marine, and are in fact mollusks, complete with a foot, gills, and mantle.
Mossy chiton
Gumboot Chiton
The gumboot is the largest species of chiton in the world - and we found one! That was an exciting find. Doesn't look like the other chiton right? Well this one has a fleshy covering over the bony plates, but when you touch it you can still feel them beneath.
Gumboot chiton - largest chiton in the world
You can see the gills here right below Brian's thumb. The light part in the middle of the animal is the foot, and the sides are the mantle
When disturbed, the gumboot chiton rolls up into a ball just like a potato bug
And lastly, up by the lighthouse we did a little bird watching and I got to learn a bit about the Common Murre.
I know, it's just a rock.... except that all those little black dots are birds
There were a few different kinds of birds on that rock and others nearby but the majority were the murres. Here's a closeup:
They look very similar to penguins as you can see. And in fact they are pretty poor fliers and can maneuver much better under water. I watched them fly and really they just kind of jumped off the big rock and awkwardly flapped their way down to the water.
The birds don't build a nest but just lay eggs right on the rock. These large rocks are like big isolated cliffs with sheer drops on all sides. But the eggs have a clever mechanism for dealing with this.
Common murre egg is in the middle
The shape of the egg allows it to roll in circles- so if it starts to go anywhere on the rock, it will turn and avoid disaster. Pretty cool.
That was an incredibly cool day! If you found anything helpful in this post, please leave a rating and a comment! And if you feel like it, join the site too. Thanks!
On the way up to dry canyon we saw a beautiful bird and sadly this is what I got on my camera after taking a while to realize I even had my camera in the car, then getting it out and trying to get the bird before it ran away:
So, after a quick search online I found that there is only one species of pheasant that lives in Utah (I was pretty sure it was a pheasant of some type). This is the ring-necked pheasant:
I am betting this guy up Dry Canyon was being hunted, because a minute later on the other side of the road we saw a man and a dog tracking along. This also explains why the bird was laying low - running through the grass and trees instead of taking to the sky.
This species - Phasianus colchicus - was introduced from Asia to the United States as a game bird. They live in open grasslands and cultivated farms. They only live about 10 months for males and 20 months for females in the wild, but can live 6 or more years in captivity. Male birds like this one are brightly colored to help win a mate in courtship, but that is obviously a disadvantage as far as survival of the individual, with male life spans being half that of the females who are brown and blend in a lot better.
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