Low tide on Tongue Point

I wanted to try to visit Tongue Point during a low tide this spring.  This basalt outcrop (part of the Crescent Formation) is generally a pretty popular and heavily impacted tide-pooling area, but I figured that since the adjacent campground has been shut down, it might have reduced some of the pressure on the intertidal community.  I made the trip with McHenry and Theo as an alternative to the usual at-home schooling we are doing, and we ended up spending most of our time here.  This is a bit of what we were able to see in an hour or so of rooting around. 

Carnivorous Nucella sp. (Dog Whelk) and eggs

Adult Pisaster ochraceous, the only one we observed

Halosaccion grandiforme (Sea Sac!), a super widely distributed red algae

A rosette of Pollicipes polymerus (Goose barnacles)

Anthopleura xanthogrammica (Giant Green Sea Anenome)

Tectura scutum (most likely; Plate Limpet), grazing an encrusting coralline algae (maybe Lithothamnion sp.?)

A Mopalia sp. (probably muscosa; Hairy Chiton)

A pot of gold!  Egregia menziesii (Feather Boa kelp) and Hedophyllum sessile (I think; Sea Cabbage kelp)

Anthopleura sp., likely Anthopleura sola.  My field team does a lot of "feeding" of anemones on these trips, but this one came by this meal all on its own.  Cool to see.

Acanthodoris nanaimoensis, the Nanaimo dorid.  Our only nudi on this trip.  

Eudystilia sp., probably vancoverii.  A Pacific coast feather duster worm.  One of my favorites 

Haliclona sp. I think (This one doesn't appear to have a common name...but it needs one).  Super cool sponge

 

Diodora aspera (Keyhole Limpet).  This one was in a group of maybe six individuals.  Haven't seen a congregation like that before

Juvenile Henricia sp. (Mottled Henricia; probably sanguinolenta?)  I can't keep track of the Henricia's :)

Diving into the Oligocene ocean

A few weeks back we headed out for a hike along the shoreline near the West Twin River, on a beautiful night just before Washington's stay at home order kicked in.  As we were poking along, we came upon some of the usual bivalve fossils that are quite common in the area:

but also ran into some quite nice examples of fossils of a type I'd seen before, but less frequently...and I'd never quite been able to figure out what I was looking at.  To me they look sort of kelpy:

But as I understand it kelp fossils are pretty rare.  Also, if you look closely, many of these fossils have a lot of internal structure going on, in a way that kelp don't:

So I reached out to Liz Nesbitt at the University of Washington, who I had the good fortune to meet doing some field work at Discovery Bay a few years ago.  Liz has to be the foremost expert on the paleontology of Washington's coast, and so I was very delighted that she replied to my email quickly, and not at all surprised that she could explain what I had seen.  

Turns out that these are teredolites (here is a nice example of some similar fossils from Wyoming) or fossilized wood that has been bored by clams of the genus Teredinidae, commonly known as shipworms.  

Liz Nesbitt is also an expert on the chronology of the strata that these fossils are associated with, and she places these in the Oligocene, a time in which what are now the Olympic Mountains were just emerging from the ocean fringing the North American continent.  Where I found these fossils was presumably a warm (the Oligocene was substantially warmer than today's world) fringing sea.  In fact, one of the oldest known whale fossils emerged from the rock near where we found these teredolites.  

Dive below the surface near the Elwha River delta

I am incredibly fortunate to be one of the few people that actually got to observe, with my own eyes, the incredible changes to the marine ecosystem that happened as a result of the Elwha dam removals.  Every year for 10 years I spent 30 to 40 hours underwater visiting the same sites, getting to know (and counting/measuring) their residents and their contours.  Of course we did what scientists do, and published our findings as a scientific paper.  However, some of the changes we observed are much more viscerally relatable when you can, well, see them.  So last year we put the finishing touches on a new website and interactive map that is designed to tell the story of the Elwha underwater.  In particular it features videos that we collected at all of our sites, that allow you to watch our sites change as we did, year after year.  Click on the map and enjoy!