The Country Mice

Thanks to Adam Taylor’s friendly foray into the briny sea, a couple dozen Islanders got up close and personal with some colourful denizens of the wet Pacific, courtesy of the Bowen Island Nature Club.

Among the creatures Adam retrieved was a nudibranch — I don’t recall the precise species and the shy creature did not take well to photographs through a plastic bag.

Also from Adam’s take-out bag emerged a sea cucumber — appearing near-solid when inflated with sea water — but immediately collapsed when held in the hands. Returned to the water it almost instantly refills itself. A creature of which I know nothing, except that it used to appear — cooked and sliced — in the hot and sour soup my brother would drink from a beaker during late evenings in a research lab at the University of Manitoba.

No telling what other ingredients those beakers would contain.

And near the final tally of crustacean critters we found fascinating were the aptly named “decorator crabs,” so called because of their attempts at better obfuscation through seaweed.

The crabs take bits of sea plant material with which they adorn their spiky little selves, thoughts of disguise or seaside summer fashion running thru their tiny little brains. Fascinating to think that such behaviour — so deliberate and bizarre — is still completely instinctive.

Wish I’d been born with that kind of fashion sense!

And finally, squid eggs. Oeufs de calmar. Pearls of the tentacled one.

About 30 potential squidlets per pocket.

Anyone for a swim?