Life on the Outer Coast

The mysterious "alga" was at long last identified as Alcyonidium, an encrusting bryozoan. 100 to 130ft was a little deep for a brown alga. Finally, Aaron missed an identification. Makes me feel a little better about the multitude of my screw-ups. In his defense, the lophophores ( a ring of tentacles that surround the mouth) weren't visible. I haven't found too much information in the books that I have available. I did find references to the genus occuring in the Pacific Northwest, British Isles, Florida, and Antarctica.

Thursday I had the opportunity to use the man-lift to collect epiphytes from two spruces. We took it up to 35ft, not really that high in a spruce, but better than I've done before. For obvious reasons, I was limited to collecting from the side of the tree adjacent to the trail, but did get to look at the windward side of one tree and one that was more sheltered from both wind and light. The first tree was next to the Shark/Raven pole on the west side of the loop trail. I didn't find any bryophytes on this spruce, but an impressive cover of lichens. I haven't found the time to go through all of the collections yet, but a quick look(s) hasn't turned up anything new for the park. The second spruce was about 20ft past the shrimp pole near the Battlefield. The tree had a much sparser cover of epiphytes. Looks like the same species of lichens (without Xanthoria) as the first tree, just fewer of them. Did find Hypnum circinale and Ptilidium californicum on the top of branches near the junction with the trunk up to 35ft. Was hoping to get to look at few more trees, but the man lift was needed for Totem pole scrubbing.

Took the kayak to the park this evening, in my haste I managed to leave my binoculars on the beach. Unfortunately I didn't notice until I was reaching for them to look at the small ducks and shorebirds at the water edge. Teal? turnstones? Even with a kayak, I couldn't get close enough to see clearly. The truely unfortunate (?,they weren't that great) bit about the binoculars is that the tide was coming in...