Oyster Blog — Tideflat Critters

Sometimes you find moon snails hanging out on the surface of the beach. Sometimes they're half-buried in the sand, but still visible, as in the video below: But only the slow-moving snails get caught at low tide with their shells exposed. Most snails are sneaky, and it takes a discerning eye to find their hidey-holes. Examine the picture below. You'll see a) Adam's hands holding a sharp oyster knife in an activated position and b) a place on the tideflats where the seaweed has been disturbed. This is where the moon snail is hiding. Oyster fan was skeptical, too. How...

The tideflats are full of life... much of it too small to notice. This little guy had lots of personality but didn't photograph well. Even in person it was hard to tell what was going on. How many legs does it have? Or are those antennae? Could it be a molted hermit crab? The flatfish below is also hard to see, but only because it's got some excellent camouflage. There are lots of juvenile starry flounders living in sloughs on the flats. Like all flounders, these fish start out as symmetrical larvae, but as they develop one eye migrates across...

The cosmopolitan moon jelly is found all over the world, frequently seen from the decks of Puget Sound ferries, and occasionally found dead on the beach at Hama Hama farm. Not sure if that qualifies them as a tideflat critter... but we'll blog about them anyways. Moon jellies, unlike other species found in Puget Sound (such as the colorful Lion's Mane jellyfish), don't have enough sting to hurt humans. Like all jellyfish, they're 95 percent water. They're probably a better diet food than grapefruit: According to Wikipedia, moon jellies, or Aurelia aurita, are commonly eaten in Asia. Moon jellies are...

The tideflats are covered with miniature crab. They skitter around the beach, hide under oyster clusters at low tide, and go into attack mode when they sense someone overhead. But they can also be kinda cuddly:     Some of the teensy crabs have huge, Popeye-on-spinach forearms. There are probably several different species of shore crabs, as they're called, but the most common, both on the beach and on the internet, are Purple Shore Crabs.