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Sampling Surfperch on the Incoming Tide
I’m always getting asked how several species of closely related small silvery surfperch can share sandy beaches without tripping over each other. How do they partition the surf zone? Do they eat...
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Field Guides
A few of my favorite field guides I’m always thinking about the intertidal, so field guides and reference books pertaining to the seashore are a big part of my life. On February 13, I posted this...
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Red-eyed medusa, Polyorchis penicillatus
Frame of reference is everything. From the perspective of sampling surf zone fishes, jellyfish in the surf tend to be an irritant. They foul lines, and in large numbers, they make sampling impossible....
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Surfperches Share Sandy Shores
Below are images of sandy beaches more or less occupied by the surfperches, Amphistichus rhodoterus and Hyperproson ellipticum, year around. All of the photos were taken at low tide and the views are...
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Aggregating Anemones Handle the Sand
It’s just a narrow strip of low lying rocks. It barely sticks out of the sand – takes a pounding from the surf and periodically gets buried by building sands. I have walked past these rocks for years...
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Getting to Know Gapers
Everybody loves collecting seashells on the beach and I’ve collected a few myself. Sandy beaches are great for finding beautiful shells because scouring sands keep them clean and round off jagged...
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Close Quarters: Redtail and Silver Surfperch Share the Surf
Redtail surfperch, Amphistichus rhodoterus Redtail surfperch, Amphistichus rhodoterus, and silver surfperch, Hyperprosopon ellipticum, can be found year round on almost any exposed sandy beach between...
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Aequorea and Other Tennessee Jellies
Jellies are so mysterious and beautiful – maybe kind of scary too – they fascinate just about everybody and you can find jellyfish articles and art just about everywhere. Last week I attended the Joint...
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Walk on a Sandy Beach
What’s a walk on the beach to you? I turned myself loose to explore the question and here’s what I found out. Birds, live and dead; stumps and logs in the wrack – one resistant old timer; my attitudes...
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“Beach” Wins 2014 TOS Word Cloud Challenge
During the previous two fall seasons I have produced word clouds from the 20 most recent TOS posts. You can see the 2012 version at Choices, Choices…Everywhere, and the 2013 version at TOS Word Clouds....
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Surfperch Camouflage Meets its Match with Terns
Elegant tern with catch The first thing I thought about when I cam across Dave Morro Bay Keeling’s photo of an elegant tern with its catch was visual predation in the surf zone. On my home beaches, I...
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Bull Kelp Drift: A Subtidal-to-Surf Zone Connection
Bull kelp, Nereocystis luetkeana What do you call a tangled mass of bull kelp on the beach? I’m not sure what you call a great spaghetti-like tangle of floats, stipes, and holdfasts, but after a long...
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Using surfperches to help understand the genomic basis of divergence and...
Gary Longo is a graduate student in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, in the Bernardi lab, at UC Santa Cruz. Gary introduces his work on the Embiotocidae in the guest post below. I became interested in...
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Favorite TOS Posts and Photos, 2014
2014 was theoutershores’ second full year in business. I published 23 new posts and uploaded 361 images. Last year I enjoyed looking back on the year’s most popular posts and sharing some thoughts...
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Northern Feather-Duster Worm
Northern feather-duster, Eudistylia vancouveri, Oregon Balancing precariously on the edge of a crevice above a rarely exposed and kind of spooky low tidepool, I came eyeball to photosensitive eyespot...
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My 2015 King Tide Project – Swell Matters
I have a fascination with very high and very low tides. Who doesn’t – they’re rare events and when they occur, things happen. Low tides are great for the naturalist; everybody’s out digging clams and...
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Keyhole Limpets on the Beach
Rough keyhole limpet, Diadora aspera I took the photo shown above in dim early morning light on February 21, 2015. Keyhole limpet shells on the beach is not an unusual thing. Rough keyhole limpets,...
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Spongy Cushion, Codium setchellii
Spongy cushion, Codium setchellii, exposed in the low intertidal Every time I come across a patch of Codium setchellii I have to pause and take a closer look. The marvelous convolutions of...
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The Drift Line’s Getting Slippery on the Northern Oregon Coast: By-the-Wind...
By-the-wind sailors, Velella velella Free-floating hydroids, by-the-wind sailors, Velella velella, have been washing ashore in great numbers, for weeks. It’s a fairly common event on Oregon beaches,...
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A Surfperch Sexfecta Journal
This is a guest post by Michael Westphal. It is his account of his field trip, executed on the central California coast with the sole objective of collecting six closely related sand-dwelling...
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