Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
What in the Worm?
On April 14, while walking at the edge of the water in Mission Beach, I came across a strange creature that had washed up on the sand. Unsure as to whether or not this tangerine-sized, coral-tinted, purple-veined thing was poisonous (and envisioning alien projectiles reaching out to grab my camera upon touching it), I decided against picking it up. Instead, I gently poked it with a stick to see if it was soft or hard. It was soft and had a white funnel-like protrusion at the end not visible in the photo. I snapped a few photos just before the next wave embraced it and pulled it back to sea.
I spent the next several days trying to figure out what I had seen. I stopped several lifeguards as they drove by me on subsequent walks. I showed them the photo. “Can you tell me what this is?”
“Hmm...never seen that before…the oceans are changing,” said a Mission Beach lifeguard.
“Looks like some sort of mussel,” said another lifeguard. “He probably lost his shell, got washed up and all stressed, thinking, I can’t make a shell here and panicked.”
It was unanimous: six lifeguards equally stumped. I then emailed the photo to Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Two days later, I got this response from Fernando Nosratpour, assistant aquarium curator at the Birch Aquarium:
“I believe the animal in your photo is a peanut worm,” said Nosratpour. “I'm not sure what species. Peanut worms bury themselves in the sand and can retract so that they take on a peanut-like shape. I'm guessing — because the animal you found is exposed to air — it's probably pretty stressed and has retracted into a ball shape. This shape may help it conserve water until the tide comes up. Normally, these guys live under the sand and siphon water/food through their tube burrow. The one you found is quite a bit larger than the more common ones we find locally.”
Google images seem not to support Nostratpour’s peanut-worm designation. Can you help solve this marine mystery?
Here's something you might be interested in.
What in the Worm?
What in the Worm?
On April 14, while walking at the edge of the water in Mission Beach, I came across a strange creature that had washed up on the sand. Unsure as to whether or not this tangerine-sized, coral-tinted, purple-veined thing was poisonous (and envisioning alien projectiles reaching out to grab my camera upon touching it), I decided against picking it up. Instead, I gently poked it with a stick to see if it was soft or hard. It was soft and had a white funnel-like protrusion at the end not visible in the photo. I snapped a few photos just before the next wave embraced it and pulled it back to sea.
I spent the next several days trying to figure out what I had seen. I stopped several lifeguards as they drove by me on subsequent walks. I showed them the photo. “Can you tell me what this is?”
“Hmm...never seen that before…the oceans are changing,” said a Mission Beach lifeguard.
“Looks like some sort of mussel,” said another lifeguard. “He probably lost his shell, got washed up and all stressed, thinking, I can’t make a shell here and panicked.”
It was unanimous: six lifeguards equally stumped. I then emailed the photo to Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Two days later, I got this response from Fernando Nosratpour, assistant aquarium curator at the Birch Aquarium:
“I believe the animal in your photo is a peanut worm,” said Nosratpour. “I'm not sure what species. Peanut worms bury themselves in the sand and can retract so that they take on a peanut-like shape. I'm guessing — because the animal you found is exposed to air — it's probably pretty stressed and has retracted into a ball shape. This shape may help it conserve water until the tide comes up. Normally, these guys live under the sand and siphon water/food through their tube burrow. The one you found is quite a bit larger than the more common ones we find locally.”
Google images seem not to support Nostratpour’s peanut-worm designation. Can you help solve this marine mystery?
Comments