Beach Report 4/18/23

Temperature were in the high 60s to low 70s when we went to the beach today after lunch. Skye and I walked up the beach, while Gabi and Georgia stayed up near the jetty and built sand castles and chased the ubiquitous Winter Jellyfish.

Skye managed to coerce some affection from one of the frequent beach walkers.

A blurry shot of an Osprey overhead.

4/1/23 Beach Report

A rainy morning spent going up and down the road for errands turned into a mostly sunny afternoon, with strong SW winds (that barely touch the beach). The tide was high, and we had to wade to get past the rocks at between Calvert Beach and Matoaka.

We managed 14 sharks teeth, and a couple of Georgia's were decent; mine were mostly little.

One thing I notice right away was a plethora of Winter Jellyfish, aka the Lions Mane Jellyfish, common here in winter but absent in summer. I'm not the only one to notice a superabundance of them this year. Chesapeake Bay Mag, Why Are Jellyfish Appearing En Masse On The Bay? 

Lions Manes are potentially one of the largest species of jelly, with bell diameters up to 7 ft, but the ones we see in the bay in winter are rarely more than about 6 inches. They do sting, but not as badly as our summertime Sea Nettles, and being in cold water, not many people get stung.

The next line of Springtime storms approaching.

Wednesday Wetness

With Gádor Muntaner@gadormunta Marine Scientist 🐚 Shark Conservationist & Researcher🦈 @natgeoesp Ambassador 🌊 📩 collab:gador@swaymgmt.es @aqualungdivers & @onlyone Ambassador🤍

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: 2B or not 2B up on time and under budget at The Other McCain.

Beach Report 12/26/20

The temperature was in the low 30s. the sky clear, and the Bay calm when we took our walk this morning.

Whitey marked another day as the latest staying Great White Heron ever recorded in Maryland. He looks cold.

I haven't seen these before. White domestic ducks.

Georgia talks to Cindy, Skye's favorite beach walker. Cindy keeps dog treats in her pockets.

The mirage causes Taylor's Island to appear to float over the horizon.

A Lion's Mane jellyfish, also known to us as the "winter" jellyfish; not seen in the Bay in summer. While they get huge in the ocean, we rarely see them more than about 6-8 inches in diameter. They can sting, but who gets into 40 degree water?

The mirage also reflects and distorts this LNG ship tied up at the Gas Dock.

A Day at the Beach

We left for the beach around 11. It's gorgeous weather here, low to mid 70's, dry, clear, and not windy.

Here a couple of Variegated Fritillarys try to insure survival of the species.

 An Osprey on a dead branch overhanging the marina. They're quite active now. We're probably seeing this year's young in addition to the parents. They all look about the same.

 Don't step on the jellyfish! You'll slip. We both did a couple of times. This one is the Chesapeake Bay Sea Nettle. There were large numbers of them washed up, along with . . .

Mnemiopsis leidyi, the "Sea Walnut". A comb jelly, and not strictly a jellyfish.  Sea Nettles eat these. Comb jellys do not sting, but they do biolumensce. Native to the Chesapeake Bay, they are a damaging invasive in the Black Sea. We'd be happy to sell the Sea Nettles. . .

 Osprey with fish

 The eagles were out an about, too, but my camera finger was too slow to get a decent shot.

And what trip is complete without the Great Blue Heron?

Do the Jellyfish!

We took another long walk on the beach yesterday. Nothing much remarkable except for the weather, 55 F, sunny, and not very windy, in February. 23 shark's teeth, none worthy of a picture.








Quite a few stranded Lions Mane Jellyfish on the shore today. This one nearly a foot across, shows the radial symmetry. We call them "winter jellies" as they are here during cold weather, and disappear in summer, replaced by the infamous Sea Nettle. Both sting, but few go in the water in winter here. It's also the largest jellyfish in the world, although ours don't get as big as they do elsewhere.




Come on, all you need is some more beer!


Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: In Like A Lioness" up and running at The Other McCain.

First Beach Post of 2017

It was low tide, almost 50 F, mostly sunny and not windy, so why not?

 And Skye had already started lobbying.

 A few other hearty souls and their people were out.

This doesn't happen every day.

 A relatively large Lions Mane jellyfish washed up. It was about a foot across. They get much bigger, but not usually around here. Not to be confused with a huge breast implant.

The Bufflehead ducks are in at the harbor (and have been for a few weeks). There are also lots of Oldsquaw offshore, but not within easy camera view.

A ship is in at the Gas Docks. The project down there to convert the Gas Dock from an export to an import facility is well along. As of August:

• The terminal is 67% complete and on track for an in-service date in late 2017.
• There are currently 1,800 construction workers on site.
• All of the concrete has been poured, the sound wall is finished, and more than 50% of the steel has been installed for this project.
• 31 of the 34 barge loads have been received and 68 of the 77 heavy haul deliveries have been transported.

Science Finds New Asshole

Why watching comb jellies poop has stunned evolutionary biologists

No buts about it, the butthole is one of the finest innovations in the past 
540 million years of animal evolution. The first animals that arose seem to have literally had potty mouths: Their modern-day descendants, such as sea sponges, sea anemones, and jellyfish, all lack an anus and must eat and excrete through the same hole. Once an independent exit evolved, however, animals diversified into the majority of species alive today, ranging from earthworms
 to humans.

I much prefer the two hole system, having had intestinal blockage once or twice upon a time.

One apparent advantage of a second hole is that animals can eat while digesting a meal, whereas creatures with one hole must finish and defecate before eating again. Other possible benefits, say evolutionary biologists, include not polluting an animal’s dining area and allowing an animal to evolve a longer body because it does not have to pump waste back up toward the head.

Sure, you could sit on the head, and eat a cheeseburger, but it's kind of gross.

However, several unprecedented videos of gelatinous sea creatures called comb jellies, or ctenophores, now threaten to upend the standard view of the evolution of the so-called through-gut. On 15 March, at the Ctenopolooza meeting in St. Augustine, Florida, evolutionary biologist William Browne of the University of Miami in Florida debuted films of comb jellies pooping—and it wasn’t through their mouths.

Browne’s videos elicited gasps from the audience because comb jellies, whose lineage evolved long before other animals with through-guts, had been thought to eat and excrete through a single hole leading to a saclike gut. In 1880, the German zoologist Carl Chun suggested a pair of tiny pores opposite the comb jelly mouth might secrete some substance, but he also confirmed that the animals defecate through their mouths. In 1997, biologists again observed indigestible matter exiting the comb jelly mouth—not the mysterious pores.

Mnemeopsis leidyi

Oysters, which do have through guts, also have a way to eliminate coarse and indigestible particles in a separate stream, so call pseudofeces, scientific talk for fake shit.

Browne, however, used a sophisticated video setup to continuously monitor two species that he keeps in captivity, 
Mnemiopsis leidyi and Pleurobrachia bachei. The movies he played at Ctenopolooza capture the creatures as they ingest tiny crustaceans and zebrafish genetically engineered to glow red with fluorescent protein. Because comb jellies are translucent, the prey can be seen as it circulates through a network of canals lacing the jellies’ bodies. Fast-forward, and 2 to 3 hours later, indigestible particles exit through the pores on the rear end. Browne also presented a close-up image of the pores, highlighting a ring of muscles surrounding each one. “This is a sphincterlike hole,” he told 
the audience.

Still a few surprises out there.

Mnemeopsis is one of two common ctenophores in the Chesapeake Bay. It was named after Joseph Leidy, a naturalist at my old institution, the Academy of Natural Sciences (of Philadelphia), recently taken over by Drexel University, by Louis Agassiz, of some note himself.

Voracious planktivores, they have been introduced to the Black Sea, where they are threatening the food webs. In Chesapeake Bay, their major function seems to be as food for the tedious Sea Nettle. But they sparkle nicely in the dark in the wake of boats.

Sunday 1/3/16 Beach Report

We hurried off to the beach this morning so we, well, I, really, could get back in time for the Redskins game at 1 PM. It was gorgeous; 45 F but windless, and cloudless.

I got lucky right of the bat and found this "Top Shelf" Mako (probably extinct Giant White Shark) tooth. It wasn't really a productive day, though, we only got four teeth total.

It's even more remarkable that I found it while being dragged down the beach at high speed.

 Something unusual out on the water. A duck with a red head. Could it be a Redhead, or a Canvasback? Looks more like a Redhead to me. You can see a blue bill on the one in front.

 The Buffies are still hanging out, although not in the huge raft they were the last time I saw them.

We even had a near fly by from a Brown Pelican. While Pelicans aren't rare in the Bay (far from it, these days), for some reason we rarely see them near our shore.

Georgia corralling a large (for us) Lion's Mane Jellyfish, one of several we saw washed up or in shallow water lately. Probably the largest jellyfish in the world:

The largest recorded specimen found, washed up on the shore of Massachusetts Bay in 1870, had a bell with a diameter of 2.3 metres (7 ft 6 in) and tentacles 37.0 m (121.4 ft) long. Lion's mane jellyfish have been observed below 42°N latitude for some time in the larger bays of the east coast of the United States.

Jellyfish Lake

Our own jellyfish (the stinging Sea Nettle) is absent from our waters this year. The usual "arrival" date is considered to be July 4.  I've heard they have put in an appearance in the nearby Patuxent River.

They are not missed.

I would note, that despite higher than average salinity this year in the mid Bay, Sea Nettle populations are much lower than normal. Curiously, the NOAA Sea Nettle prediction center is not currently working. Even though the data for the two simple parameters used to predict them (temperature and salinity) are measured at many sites. Hmm, maybe it's not as easy as they thought.

Cold at the Beach 1/10/15

About 1 PM today, we got cabin fever, and decided to check out the beach at an exceptionally low tide. The temperature peaked around 27 degrees, and the 10-15 north wind made it pretty chilly. We only saw a few hardy people on the beach.

 As you can see, we do have a little ice built up on the jetty, and along the shore. If the temperatures stay this low for a few more days, we'll get a pretty good build up. It takes a lot of cold to freeze far out, but it has happened.

We saw quite a number of these, Lion's Mane Jellyfish , stranded on the shore. We tend to call them "winter jellies" because they are the only one around in winter.

This one was about a foot across when flattened out. They get huge in cold waters, at one time they were considered the world's longest animal due to their long trailing tentacles. They can sting, but they are a lesser menace than our summer Sea Nettle, because of lesser abundance and just because we don't swim in the Bay in winter.

The low tide really changed the look of the beach, producing this little "inlet" between the shore and the first sandbar, which is rarely exposed.

 A crab pot that wandered into shallow water somehow and got lost. Ghost pots like this continue to fish and kill crabs and fish until they eventually disintegrate.