A Couple Days at Dockweiler State Beach, Los Angeles

There's a high concentration of humanity on the shore here, but the ocean still offers up some natural things, as it always does. We visited from July 15 -17.

Willets. We also saw dowitchers, Marbled Godwits, Whimbrels, Sanderlings in breeding plumage, and the expected gulls (Western and Heermann's).

Dolphins (these were actually off the Manhattan Beach Pier a few miles to the south). Look like Pacific Bottlenose. 

Pyrosomes (Pyrosoma sp.), which are colonial tunicates embedded in a gelatinous tunic. These can also be bioluminescent, and are normally pelagic (found in the open ocean). They were washed up dead along the beach. Thanks to my colleague Paul Detwiler for identifying these creatures.

Each "spine" contains a single filter-feeding tunicate.

A MINUTE crab, spotted by the kids on the blacktop adjacent to the beach, of all places. It was about 6-7 mm long.

An impressive red alga. Need to find an algae field guide to ID this one! It was about 8 inches long.

Unfortunately this is not an organism. A huge oil tanker arrived, pumped oil, then departed while we were there. Afterwards, there were many blobs of petroleum on the beach...

Avian Feeding Frenzy with Anchovies on the Menu

Just south of the southern end of Imperial Beach, the feasting continued today. I arrived around 1:30 pm or so, and watched the masses of terns, gulls, pelicans and shearwaters circling and diving, with many floating on the water.

By about 2:30 most of this mass had dispersed.

One anchovy washed ashore - surprising that so few seemed to make it to the sand, considering the chaos just off the beach.

The mass of birds at a slight distance.

This was about the peak of activity that I observed. Coronado Islands in the background.

At this point many of the birds were just a couple dozen feet out from the sand, with some right at the shore's edge. There were a few fish in the shallows in this spot.

The cause of all the fuss (or more accurately, this one's buddies offshore!).

There were small feathers all over the wet sand.

Looking towards the north, the line of terns and other birds went on well into the distance. 

Summery Day on the South County Shore

Gary and I took a little trip yesterday to explore the beach just north of Imperial Beach and south of Silver Strand State Beach. A lot of organic material had washed ashore, including masses of California Mussels, as well as much kelp.

Mussel mass with surf grass

Some of the mussels had Leaf Barnacles attached.

California Mussel with Leaf Barnacles

This is a beach popular with clammers due to its concentration of Pismo Clams. What I presumed to be immature clam shells were here and there on the shore.

A small clam - about 30 mm in length

A larger specimen, but nowhere near the final adult size!

Most of the shells on this beach are heavily wave-worn, like this Chestnut Cowrie.

Chestnut Cowrie, after much rolling around in the sand and surf

The beach was surprisingly bird-filled, with Willets, Marbled Godwits, and Forster's Terns being present in numbers (the Forster's Terns in large numbers as they fished in the huge anchovy schools off shore). We also saw the occasional Royal Tern in full breeding plumage. A lone Long-billed Curlew graced the beach and we saw several more in the Tijuana Estuary area later.

Long-billed Curlew, with the Silver Strand and downtown San Diego, as well as the Coronado Bridge, visible in the background

We saw easily over a half dozen Snowy Plovers skulking in the higher, drier portions of the beach as well. Signs discourage people or dogs from walking in their territory, but no fences exist, as we saw in Oregon last month for the protection of this species. The plovers are extremely well camouflaged, and tend to move in short bursts of activity, as opposed to just meandering around as the Willets do.

Snowy Plover standing at the edge of a tire track!

We also saw a merganser hanging around the edge of the water, and occasionally entering the shallows. A scoter (probably a Surf Scoter) was seen fishing in the shallows, as well.

Scoter in shallow water

Sea Star Wasting Syndrome in Oregon (and Elsewhere)

We made a trip to Oregon in mid-June, and visited several beaches and tide pool areas from northern California up to Otter Rock, Oregon (which is just north of Newport).

Last September, we visited Otter Rock and spent about an hour wandering around at the fantastic tide pools just below the inn. The Ochre Sea Stars (Pisaster ochraceus) were in good numbers and seemed healthy and happy (as a sea star can seem).

Ochre Sea Stars at water's edge, September 2013, Otter Rock, Oregon

Otter Rock, September 2013

Otter Rock, September 2013

This June, we saw no truly healthy looking Ochre Sea Stars, although we did see a fair number of individuals of this species. They all looked withdrawn at the least, or "half-melted" in more dramatic cases.

Otter Rock, June 2014

Otter Rock, June 2014

A biologist at the Hatfield Marine Science Center confirmed that the disease has been detected in the area very recently.

In contrast, the rest of the tide pool ecosystem seemed healthy to our fairly untrained eyes.

Purple Sea Urchins were very abundant and filled the bottoms of some tide pools. Otter Rock, June 2014

Leopard Nudibranch, Diaulula sandiegensis, Otter Rock, June 2014

Ochre Sea Stars are often used as an example of a keystone species in ecology lessons, as they eat mussels, thus reducing the coverage of the rocks by these bivalves, and allowing a greater diversity of species to live in a given area. Without Ochre Sea Stars, mussels tend to become so abundant that they take up vast areas of prime intertidal "real estate", forcing other species out of the area.

We saw what appeared to be new crops of baby mussels at Otter Rock - likely a trend to follow the demise of the sea stars.

Small California Mussels, with Gary's feet for scale.

Happily, at Humbug Mountain State Park, further south on the Oregon coast, we saw very healthy (and hungry) Ochre Sea Stars. I had never seen so much mussel-eating before!

A hefty California Mussel just visible underneath this healthy Ochre Sea Star. Humbug Mountain SP, Oregon. June 2014.

Another sea star looking suspiciously like it's dining on mussel. Humbug Mountain SP, Oregon. June 2014.

Now the sea star wasting syndrome has hit our San Diego coastal area, so it may experience dramatic changes in the months and years to come, also:

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/Jun/20/environment-sea-star-wasting-syndrome-san-diego/

When I first moved to San Diego County with my family in 1977, and for years after, I never found sea stars of any kind at the tide pools in La Jolla and elsewhere locally, and only in the '90s and 2000s did I see good numbers of sea stars here in the San Diego region. Perhaps the trend will be a reversal to what I saw in the seventies, at least for a while.