Esquimalt Lagoon – 3 October 2013

It was a sunny Thursday morning at Esquimalt Lagoon for the other class of second year marine scientists.

Again, we did two beach seines but at this location there was much less seaweed.

We found crangonid shrimp in the seine:

We then moved to the cobbles and found a diverse collection of organisms under the rocks.

Lots of crabs including: green shore crabs (Hemigrapsus oregonensis), decorator crabs and hermit crabs.

We also found amphipods, isopods, barnacles, periwinkles, mussels, fish eggs and flatworms (and those were all under a single rock!).

Witty’s Beach – 30 September 2013

It was a rainy Monday morning (30 September) but second year marine scientists persevered…

We did two beach seines:

which both resulted in copious amounts of seaweed.

We searched through the seaweed and found some interesting organisms that we looked at back at the lab using dissecting microscopes (photos from Taylor’s iPhone).

A decorator crab.

A flat-top sea squirt (Chelysoma sp.)

A cancrid crab.

We also examined the sand grains under the microscope:

 

We did a little digging at Witty’s Beach…

 

and found a beautiful red polychaete worm:

 

And finally a photo of the Haystack Islets:

Witty’s Beach with A block

On Tuesday 9 April, second year Marine Science students travelled to Witty’s Beach as an example of a sandy beach ecosystem. We did a beach seine in which we found young flatfish (still mostly transparent), staghorn sculpins and crangonid shrimp.