Who is in the water?

There is a lot of phytoplankton in the water today. It is primarily composed of dinoflagellates. The dinoflagellates are little swimming beasts that can not only photosynthesize like grass, but also love to eat their competitors. Imagine a venus fly trap that runs around catching flys. Mostly, the species swimming round right now are 'gymnodiniod' in shape. (we used to classify all these into the Gymnodinium genus, but with DNA and scanning electron microscopy, it became clear that using only shape grouped many organisms together that were unrelated.)

Our water sample (a glass of water) also had three great big pink pigmented Calanus copepods swimming in it; see its facebook page! These large copepods are zooplankton that eat dinoflagellates. These copepods are beautiful animals, and my son enjoyed seeing the huge singular eyespot on the top of its head.

The fine green fuzz on the rocks has moved up a few feet in the last two weeks. It sure is slippery. When walking down to the boat ramp at low tide, we noticed a lot of small green Ulva, then some tufts of Ectocarpus (dark purple). As you continue towards the water some tiny Fucus starts appear mixed in with the fuzzy red Polysiphonia. Right where the tide is at its lowest point, the iridescent Mazaella shines up at you, mixed with some larger Fucus plants, several larger spiral roped Neorhodomella with many epiphytes. As we waded into the water we noticed a nice thick crop of young Alaria with its prominent single mid-rib.

Most notable of all was that the cobble rocks to our right and left were bare of all macroalgae save the green Ulva slime. The boatramp is several feet higher than the surrounding rocks, so it is exposed to air much longer than the neighboring cobble rocks are. This is the difference having a fixed surface makes. If those cobbles were magically cemented in place so the winter storms couldn't tumble them, they would look much more like the boat ramp. Seaweeds would be able to hang on through the winter, and get an early start on spring growth. The main disturbance on the boat ramp is the annual dose from the pressure washer! And it is a good thing that pressure washer works - or we'd never be able to walk on the slippery ramp.