Winged winter guests
Monterey Bay’s mild winter weather attracts a variety of migrants and visitors from the north and south. Our winter wonderland provides for great coastal birding. These are winter guests spotted one morning last week from Monterey Waterfront Park and Del Monte Beach
(an extension of Monterey State Beach).
Bonaparte’s gulls are more like terns than gulls — they’re small for a gull, delicate and acrobatic in flight. They’re also easy to photograph as the glide, dip and dive for fish along the shore’s shallows and lagoons. These gulls are not in breeding plumage this time of year (no black head), but you can tell young ones (in the photo) from adults. The immature birds have black all along the wing tips and black along the backside of the wings. Bonaparte’s will winter here until their summer breeding grounds across Alaska and northern Canada warm up.
An autumn and winter visitor is the Heermann’s gull, a very distinctive slate gray gull with a red bill. This time of year we see an age range from first year through adult. (Most of the larger gulls take 3 to 4 years to mature. The coloration differs each year, which makes them a challenge to identify — a single species has several color phases before developing adult plumage. In addition, breeding plumage can be different from non-breeding. For more on identifying gulls, see my post Do you know your gulls?) 
The single gull (in the photo above) is an adult Heermann’s in breeding plumage. The duo (photo to the right) includes two Heermann’s: a second-year bird (the closer) and a third-year bird (the farther). Soon these gulls (at least the adults) will be heading south to breeding grounds in Baja and Mexico.
Along the beach among the gulls were two phoebes: a black phoebe and a Say’s phoebe. The black phoebe (left photo) is fairly common along the coast year-round. I often see them bouncing from fence post to post or kelp pile to pile in search of insect meals. Kelp flies are in abundance and might be what they seek. 
I haven’t seen the Say’s phoebe before. It’s my understanding that they prefer more open and drier environments than our coast (although it’s been extremely dry here this winter and our sandy beaches certainly are open). This species is probably moving through, heading to warmer southern California and Mexico. The two phoebes are closely related, but didn’t look much like one another. However, their behaviors were similar. The Say’s flitted among the kelp wrack and along the shoreline seeking insects. They were fun to watch.
On the waters just beyond the surf (which was minimal) were a variety of diving ducks, some familiar and some new to me. One of the most familiar was the bufflehead. The bright white patch on the side of the head of the female and back of the head of the male makes them easy to identify. There were large groups of females heading somewhere important. I didn’t see many males. These birds will fly east and north in the spring.
Another visitor that I find easy to identify is the merganser. The slender bill is distinctive, as is the shaggy feather-do. These red-breasted mergansers are migrants and it’s always a treat to see them because their stay sometimes is short. This duo was very busy diving and popping back up with little fish while they skirted along the edges of the other diving duck groups.
A bird new to me (I don’t know ducks very well yet) was the common goldeneye. Once I figured out the signs — white dot at the base of the bill and a chocolaty head — they were easier to spot. However, photos were tough because the birds were between me and the sun and they were very busy preening and diving. I got a lot of shots of tail feathers. As with many of the other birds, these are wintering here (and across much of the U.S.) until spring/summer when they return to Canada and Alaska.
A second new species for me was the greater scaup, also a wintering visitor from the north. This group had the sun at their backs and so were challenging to identify and photograph. (And, honestly, after a while, so many ducks on blue water all started to look alike.) The scaup had white around the base of the bill and looked more duckish than others.
In addition to all of these, there were four other species of gull, three species of grebe, many surf scoters and a seemingly out-of-place ringed-necked duck. Joining in on our day’s birdwatching was a resident peregrine falcon.
It was a great day visiting with winter guests.
My thanks to my weekly birding group and
our patient, eagle-eyed mentor, Brian Weed.
Sea butterflies
Animals that aren’t as I expect them to be (such as flightless birds, legless lizards, flying fish) fascinate me. One such animal is the sea butterfly. A sea butterfly is as lovely as its name — it’s a delicate creature that flies on broad gossamer wings.
(You can get a quick look at it on this short YouTube video of a dive off the Monterey Harbor Breakwater.) But a sea butterfly isn’t what it seems. It’s not a butterfly, of course; neither is it a jellyfish. It’s a marine snail.
The sea butterfly (Corolla spectabilis) is a gelatinous snail adapted to a pelagic (open water) life. It’s not very big — the body core is about an inch (2.5 cm) and the wings grow to 3 inches (8 cm). They work like wings, flapping to move the animal through the water (as you saw on the video). Also on the video, you may have noticed a dark spot in the animal. That’s its gut. To eat, it creates a mucous sheet, like a drift net, up to 6.5 feet (2 meters) across to collect plankton from the water. This snail has no external shell, but is protected by an internal gelatin core called a pseudoconch (or faux shell) that’s covered with bumps called tubercules.
So why am I so interested in sea butterflies. It’s because of a beachcombing discovery. This week I found quite a few of these crystal-like jelly casings while I walked the beach. Unlike the usual jelly blobs, these glistened in the light, had more structure to them and were bumpy. Once I saw one, I continued to find sea butterfly pseudoconchs all along my walk.
Any jelly sea creature that’s washed onto the beach is pretty beat up. Waves can be rough. But lately ours have been gentle and a few of the beached sea butterflies still carried their wings.
It’s a shame to find their remains on the beach, but the discovery of these pseudoconchs has been a delight and they bring me just a little closer to the sea butterfly beauties that fly through the bay.
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Sources
A Blue Water News blog post helped me identify the pseudoconchs on the beach.
Sea Slug Forum: Corolla spectabilis
The JelliesZone: Corolla spectabilis
Wrobel, D. & Mills, C. (1998). Pacific Coast Pelagic Invertebrates: A guide to the common gelatinous animals. Monterey, CA: Sea Challengers and Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Latest jelly mystery
I didn’t expect to write so much about jelly blobs, but they’re common on beach walks and the mystery of what each is when alive fascinates me. (Here are links to my earlier blogs about not all beach blobs being jellies and more jelly blobs). Because I seldom find the entire animal, I must do some detecting and use the clues at my feet to figure out what I’m seeing. The latest gelatinous bits showed up in late summer and have continued to wash onto the beach (mostly Monterey’s Del Monte Beach). The mystery — what are they?
These blobs are unusual in that they’re not loose jelly. They have substance, like silicone, and structure, like the petals of a gel flower. At first I thought they were human-made refuse (common on our beaches, too), but as I encountered more over the weeks, I began to think their origin was organic. Yet the shape and structure were foreign to me and the clues as to the creature were minimal.
Then I happened upon a few that were more than just flowerlike cups — they had flaps with color. Helpful clues. The flaps were more jelly-esque and the color was brownish. I started to conclude that I was seeing some part of a jelly (jellyfish). But which part? And which animal? A golden-brown jelly common in Monterey Bay is the sea nettle (Chrysaora fuscescens). Could that be the source?
The “true” jelly (class Scyphozoa) appears to be mostly bell, arms and tentacles. On the beach, I usually find bits of bell. However, there’s much more to a jelly. As hard as it is to imagine, jellies have senses, muscles and a digestive system.
They’re adept predators. Once prey are zapped by tentacles covered in nematocysts (stinging cells), the jelly digests and absorbs the nutrients for distribution to the rest of the body. The body of the sea nettle has frilly oral arms, which transport food toward a mouth inside the center of the bell, or if the food is too large, the arms digest it and transport the nutrients. Such a jelly has an amazing digestive (gastrovascular) system for catching and distributing necessary nutrients.
I think what I’m looking at is the central stomach structure (manubrium) from inside the bell that’s connected to the oral arms. Because of the color of what’s tossed on the beach, I’m guessing these are manubria from sea nettles. But, I could be totally wrong. I’m not a jelly morphologist and interpreting clues doesn’t always lead to a correct conclusion. If any marine gelatinous-life experts read this, I’d love to hear what you think these are. (Thanks.)
Update 12/22/13: Today I took this photo of a mostly intact moon jelly (Aurelia sp.) on Monterey State Beach. This animal is upside-down (top of bell on sand with underside up). You can (at least I can) clearly see the parts that hang under the bell and include the mouth area and manubrium structure. This looks very much like the mystery structures that I’ve been finding on the beach. Mystery solved!
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Sources
Note: Errors in this post are my own misinterpretations of these excellent sources. CP
Cronodon: Building Bodies of Jellies/Jellyfish
The JelliesZone
Wrobel, D. & Mills, C. (1998). Pacific Coast Pelagic Invertebrates: A guide to the common gelatinous animals. Monterey, CA: Sea Challengers and Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Resources
Abbott, D. P. (1987). Observing Marine Invertebrates. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Aquarium of the Pacific: West Coast Sea Nettle
Brusca, R. C. & Brusca, G. J. (1990). Invertebrates. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc.
Monterey Bay Aquarium: Sea nettle
Monterey Bay Aquarium: Moon jelly
Dungeness crab season
Dungeness crab
Credit: NOAA MBNMS
Today is the opening day of California’s sport fishery for Dungeness crab. The 2013-2014 season runs from November through June. We don’t get much happy environmental news these days and so it’s nice to write about an abundant local animal whose population is healthy and fishery sustainable. Dungeness crab (Metacarcinus magister, formerly Cancer magister) is a favorite of mine, not so much for the eating (which is good), but for observing. This summer thousands (my rough estimate) dotted our beaches. They were a constant companion that fascinated me during long beach walks.
Most of the “dungies” that I encountered on sandy beaches were small — the carapace about an inch (2.5 cm) across. That’s nowhere near the 5.75-inch (14.6 cm) minimum size for the fishery or the full-grown 9-inch (23-cm) adults. These little dungies were juveniles somewhere around 1 to 2 years after hatching. 
Littering the beaches I found mostly live hard-shells and soft-shells, and later in the summer, discarded molts (it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference without handling them – carefully). Little crabs on their backs kicking wildly appeared very much out of their element.
What were all these lively crabs doing on the beach at my feet?
Dungeness crabs hatch from eggs — a mature, berried-up female may carry as many as 2.5 million. Upon hatching, they drift as oceanic plankton for the first year or so, and develop into forms that appear nothing like an adult crab. 
During the first two years they may molt (discard the old and grow a new shell) as much as six times a year. Upon reaching maturity, at about three years, the molts tend to decline to once a year. They can live six to ten years.
Juveniles live in protected, shallow waters of estuaries and sandy beaches with pier pilings and eelgrass beds. They find shelter by burying themselves in the sand. (I discovered that if I scooped out a little trench behind a live crab on a wet beach, it would quickly back into it and disappear. This proved easier, and safer, for me than tossing pinching crabs into the water.)
I think what happens along our beaches is that during the molt season the little crabs in the shallows get picked up by waves and tossed onto the beach or an ebbing tide leaves them high and dry. On the sand they’re vulnerable to hungry crows and gulls, the drying sun and playful children (although the claws even at that size are a great deterrent, speaking from a painful experience). 
How a population can handle this kind of carnage, I don’t know. I can understand if the beach were littered with molts and a few live crabs were among them. The process must be grueling. It was obvious that there were a lot of molting juvenile crabs just off the beach, and synchronizing their molting surely helps individuals among so many to avoid predation. But I saw more struggling crabs on the beach than I did molts (until late summer). Maybe it’s an adolescent test, but it seems like a wasteful strategy. I’m looking forward to next summer (even with the fog). I want to see if this was the usual or an unusual year.
All summer the dungies kept me curious and entertained. I watched them, watched people interacting with them, photographed them, tossed them into the surf and dug many little trenches for them. On each walk I learned something new (like how to tell a Dungeness crab from a graceful crab – but that’s another post). Even though November is the start of Dungeness crab season for many here, as you can see, my favorite crab season is a summer watching dungies.
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Sources
California Department of Fish & Wildlife. Dungeness crab of California and its close relatives.
Encyclopedia of Life: Metacarcinus magister – Dungeness crab
Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch: Dungeness Crab
Morris, R., Abbott, D. & Haderlie, E. (1980). Intertidal Invertebrates of California. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife: Life of a Dungeness Crab
Sept, J. D. (2002). The Beachcomber’s Guide to Seashore Life of California. Madeira Park, BC Canada: Harbour Publishing.
SIMoN (Sanctuary Integrated Monitoring Network). Species database: Cancer magister – Dungeness crab
Monterey Bay Walk #3
Marina State Beach
Yesterday I completed the final 10-mile (16-km) leg of my Monterey Bay trek with Sandy Lydon and company. (Last year I walked this same stretch on my final day with Slow Adventure.) These are home beaches for me since they’re so close to where I live. This morning was clear, bright and mild when we started. I figured the day’s walk would be fairly easy (I say fairly because the sand here is loose and can be tiring), but I was relaxed and ready.
The parking lot above Marina State Beach, where we all met, was very busy. Locals were gathering to pick up trash! Saturday was California’s annual Coastal CleanUp Day and at that hour hundreds of people (mostly young people) were readying to walk Monterey Bay beaches with buckets and trash bags to clean up. On the one hand, it’s very encouraging; on the other, it’s so sad that we have to schedule events to pick up after people who carelessly use our beaches. I carried a small bag on the walk to do what I could, especially at less accessible spots like the beach along Fort Ord Dunes State Park. It was nice not to be a lone trash picker today.
As we walked down to the beach, we were greeted by fairly large waves (6 to 8 feet/1.8 to 2.4 m) — larger than usual for this time of year. And, just beyond were feeding humpback whales, dolphins and seabirds (sorry, no pictures). Exciting sendoff.
Because these beaches aren’t visited by people much, there are often large flocks of gulls (maybe hundreds) of mixed species and ages on the sand. I was able to identify Heermann’s and western gulls. There may have been others. Unfortunately, when we got close, they all took flight, which made identification challenging and getting dumped on highly likely.
Fort Ord Dunes State Park
Our first stop was a climb to the top of the dunes at the north end of Ford Ord Dunes State Park. (Fort Ord was a U.S. Army post established in 1917, decommissioned in the 199os, designated a state park along the coastal side in 2009 and a national monument along the eastern side in 2012.) While we learned tales about the history of the site and the U.S. military’s presence along the Monterey Bay, the building story for me was the weather. 
During the talk, clouds began to build. The wind started picking up, blowing off the tops of waves, all while the tide was reaching its peak. Once we started walking again, we were buffeted by blasts of wind and had to dodge rising wave wash. (There’s no safe exit from this beach until you reach the south end of the park at Sand City — about 3.5 miles or 5.6 km. Last year along here there were several places where the wave wash was hitting the base of the cliffs.) Fortunately, this year there was plenty of beach, but the sand was soft. We trudged along as quickly as we could. The sky seemed to darken with each mile. Experiencing the arrival of this fast-moving storm, it was easy to see how sailors and fishers are caught by surprise and lost at sea. I was glad I wasn’t on a boat.
Monterey State Beach
By the time we reached the Monterey Beach Resort (a hotel on Monterey State Beach where the cities of Seaside and Monterey meet), the clouds were dark gray and threatening rain. We lunched at the picnic tables and heard from UCSC geologist Gary Griggs about the movement of sand, sand mining and erosion along the coast (important because beach and cliff erosion is a serious problem especially along the southern half of the bay). Gary was very knowledgable and provided great information, but it was really hard to stay focused while it rained. We covered up as best we could, listened patiently, then ran from the rain as soon as he finished. We found shelter at the hotel’s entrance and dried out while waiting for the showers to stop.
Del Monte Beach
The storm passed, we regrouped and continued our walk along Monterey State Beach and Del Monte Beach (which are basically the same here). The last mile (1.6 km) of walking was pleasant —
no rain, little wind and lots of sunshine. We used the wooden stairs (only ones on the beach) to cross over the dunes (and across Navy owned property) down to the “rec trail” (Monterey Bay Coastal Recreational Trail). This is an old railway line that’s been converted to a bike & pedestrian path that’s well used.
We ended with sunny skies, big smiles and tired feet. My thanks to Sandy for the history, Annie and friends for the smooth operation, and my companionable fellow walkers for a great time.
Walking the length of Monterey Bay is always an interesting adventure. Try it!
WordCraft.NatureFocus 