Hama Hama® Oyster Blog

No idea what this is, but couldn’t resist picking it up.

Earlier this month we came across one of these worms for the first time ever out on the flats, and we tried to save it to photograph, but it crawled into a mass of mussel byssel threads and escaped.

Apologies for the dishpan hands. They come with the territory.

Another mystery from the deep.

This one came in on a tub that had been soaking for several weeks at a negative tide level. It was purple and wide eyed, and it could suction itself to the bottom of a bucket like it wanted to stay there.

We took pictures of its head. It had horns:

We had absolutely no idea what kind of fish it was, and Oyster Fan made the now-infamous and very whimsical suggestion that it might be a baby seal. But really I just said it looked like a baby seal, as in “of course this is really a fish, but isn’t its head funny looking?”

The purple creature was clearly very unhappy during its brief stay in the aquarium, huffing and scampering about like a lost puppy. So we let it go. Here it is, swimming to deep water:

To identify the critter we enlisted the help of Keith from the really cool site Emerald Diving.com. Here’s his response:

Cool find, indeed.  It looks like snailfish. Snailfish have modified pelvic fins that form a sucker and allow the fish to hold fast to solid objects, as you described.  They also will also often double over and wrap their tail around to the their head on occasion – kind of like they are curling up into a ball.  The “horns” are actually its nostrils.  It is hard to tell the species from the photo,  but if I had to guess, I’d say it is a Ribbon Snailfish (Liparis cyclopsus) – a rare find indeed!!!

And here’s a photo of a showy snailfish from Keith’s fish portfolio:

Thanks Keith!

About a year ago Nathan brought in this strange-looking crab. It was about the same size as a regular shore crab, but it had a much different shape and nobody had ever seen anything like it on the beach.

After seeing a photo of a mottled-looking juvenile green crab at the recent Pacific Coast Shellfish Grower’s Association conference, we got worried this might be an invasive European green crab. Green crab are bad news and have invaded beaches and estuaries along the Pacific Coast, although they haven’t (yet) made it into Puget Sound. So we enlisted the help of some identification experts, and eventually got this response from Brian Bingham of Western Washington University:

This looks like a juvenile red rock as you say.  They are extremely variable in coloration and I have seen others similar to this.  The black tipped claws, the shape of the carapace and the clear teeth along the carapaces edges say Cancer productus. As you say, Lophopanopeus has a carapace that is much squarer.

So, we learn something new every day. For more about red rock crab, go here.

We’ve been wondering what these creatures are for quite some time, and we still don’t really have an answer. But we’re pretty sure they’re parchment tube worms… or at least that name makes the most sense to us.

The mysterious tubes, and the animals that make them, prove once again that there’s always more to the tideflats than first meets the eye.

Mystery creature identified! Sort of. According to Jeff at the Seattle Aquarium, it looks like the body of a sea whip, but it may also be the body of a sea pen. But because the thing reminded us of a bull whip, and we have little more to go on, we’re going to call it a sea whip.

We got the picture below of sea whips in their native habitat from this site. The whips like to live at least 100 feet deep and in a nice sandy bottom.

It turns out that this isn’t the first time that shrimp traps have interfered with sea whips, which is too bad.

We found one site that referred to sea whips as “deepwater corals,” but other than that we know very little about this creature. Most sites categorize it as a “miscellaneous” animal. We’ll let you know if we discover anything.

Cousin Jesse pulled this thing up with his shrimp pot yesterday during the last day of the recreational shrimp season. It’s about 5 feet long, and is rigid at the base and flexible at the top, kind of like a bull whip. It’s slimy. It’s not vegetable, and it’s not man-made, and we have absolutely no idea what it is.

Mystery solved!

To everyone except native Lilliwaupians the blood oyster is known as a rock oyster, or jingle shell. Officially, the animal is called Pododesmus cepio.

Other names include Pacific jingle, blister shell, false jingle shell, green false jingle shell, and money shell.

Another official name is Pododesmus macrochisma.

The bivalve lives in the low intertidal zone to 300 feet. It’s not a scallop (but thank-you to the  people wrote in suggesting that the red meat was actually scallop roe). And it’s not a clam. But it isn’t really an oyster, either.  Here’s a photo of a live one:

‘Jingle shell’ is used to describe various species of bivalve that extend byssal threads through their bottom shells to attach themselves to rocks (or pilings, or other shells, etc). The delicate, translucent shells make a jingling sound when strung together in wind chimes or necklaces.

We don’t know what this is. And neither did these three graybeards, who between them have nearly a century and a half of experience in the Hood Canal oyster industry:

Nathan is the only one who wasn’t shocked at the bright red bivalve. He said that they grow way out deep and called them “blood oysters.”

We love that delightfully dramatic name, and will continue to use it,  but the general consensus is that it’s some sort of scallop. Are there any scuba divers out there who know what this is?

Below is a series of photos showing Jim shucking the red… thing.

First he pries it off of a Pacific oyster shell:

…and it comes all the way off. If it had been a real oyster, he would have only been able to pry off the top shell.

The thing used a muscle to attach itself to the empty shell:

Here’s the hole for the muscle:

And here it is fully open:

We’ve called every expert we could think of to try to get an ID on this creature, but for now we’ll have to end this post with a cliff hanger.

Stay tuned!

Nathan has converted a spare saltwater tank into a temporary fish shelter where we can store bullheads, eels, and other creatures that accidentally get swept up off the beach with the oyster tubs.

The other day he found this amazing orange fish. And while this fish is indeed wild, it’s definitely not a bullhead. In fact, we have no idea what it is. These photos aren’t very good, but the fish has a strange apparatus coming straight up out of the top of its head.

At first we thought it was a juvenile ling cod… but ling cod (below) don’t have that crazy headgear.

Neither do spiny rockfish:

And so we’re stumped.

If we had to name this fish, we’d call it a masked lion fish. Or a Zorro fish.

Any ideas?

On an unrelated note: while doing fish sleuthing, we discovered this post about an albino ratfish found in Puget Sound.

The ratfish is a ridiculous creature. It has the body of a shark, the tail of a rat, the eyes of a lemur, and the face of a rabbit. We found a sorry looking specimen out on the tideflats a couple of nights ago. It was alive, but not at all lively.

Ratfish don’t have scales, live between 40 to 300 feet deep, and eat like an ancient dachshund: they use their teeth to mash up shrimp, worms, clams, and fish.

This particular fish had a strange growth on its forehead. It looked like a little worm. We couldn’t find anything about it on the internet. Any thoughts?

Because a Ratfish’s body is supported by cartilage, it goes limp when removed from the water. But still, it was a little disturbing to see this fish looking so helpless. We found it lying on the oyster beds and put it into a slough still filled with water from the outgoing tide.

The next morning, after doing some research on the ratfish, we learned this from Wikipeia:

They also have a venomous spine located on the front of their dorsal fin.

the ratfish is able to inflict a mildly toxic wound.

So the next time we attempt to rescue a ratfish in distress, we won’t use our bare hands!

Ratfish, chin up.