Strange, weird or odd or whatever beach finds thread….
- Thread starter Stonedfish
- Start date
Damn, that's a haul, never had much luck out this way for anything but fern fossils!
I’ve never looked for fern fossils but that sounds fun too! I’m game for any treasure hunt if it has good scenery and is challenging enough to keep me engaged and have a brief meditative moment.
Last edited:
Anyone know what this is? It’s not a fossil, just a shell I picked up.
Hi SHD,
It is probably a rock scallop shell, Crassodoma gigantea. This is the second largest scallop species in the world. Unlike the smaller pink scallops or spiny scallops that can "swim" away when threatened by a predator like a starfish, rock scallops glue themselves to a rock wall when they transition from their planktonic larval stage to a juvenile. They rely on the bulk of their shell to reduce predation. Like other bivalves, rock scallops are filter feeders, but they lack the siphons that we typically associate with clams. Cilia on their gills draw in water through the central opening of the shell. That plankton-rich water passed over the gills where food items are trapped in mucus, transported to the mouth, and swallowed. The filtered water exits out of the side of the shell opening. In Washington state, rock scallops can be harvested by recreational divers, up to 6 per day, for their large adductor muscle. But there can be issues with paralytic shellfish poisoning in their tissues and the locations where they are found are not likely monitored by the Department of Health.
The shells of large, older scallops typically have that "holey" pattern that is so clear in the first picture because the shells are infested with yellow boring sponge, Cliona californiana. These sponge erodes the calcium carbonate shell by secreting acid and chipping away at the shell. This creates caverns within the shell material where the sponge lives. When alive in a scallop shell, just a bit of yellow tissue shows; that tissue allows the sponge to draw in seawater to filter its planktonic prey. By living inside the scallop shell, the sponge is largely out of reach of nudibranchs (shell-less snails) that might munch on their tissues. This burrowing does weaken the shell. This sponge also bores into the shells of giant barnacles, Balanus nubilis.
Steve
Last edited:
Griswald
Steelhead
That is amazing.
Sea Turtle?
5 balls and some multivits. That piece of driftwood going in the garden when the salt's leached a little
:
:
Puget Sound Palm
Mutzkis these days…not fetch’n.
Lot of sand shifted around over winter and brought out some of the wrecks. It was pretty amazing to see about 2 feet of new sand dumped up where the grass was
Not weird, just fun.
SF
SF
Kinda looked like a piano
Whoa that's definitely freaky, not the orange part, the rope part. I had a worn green rope with knots in it that I was using to hold back a leaning tree, it didn't really work and I cut the tree down and the rope up, it was knotted in places to about those lengths. I tossed it out last month. The rope was my former anchor rope and was exactly that kind of green nylon home depot special, so not exactly uncommon rope, but still
Last edited:
One of the many great things about fishing the sound and canal is the diversity of sea produce opportunities for the observant angler. I spotted this post spawn broccoli during a quick recon stop between estuaries today. Hard to believe the same region supports citrus and veggies but it does.
In my other life I was stationed at Oxnard AFB, we had a big rain in 1969 just before the broccoli was ready to pick. they could not get out to pick if because the mud was almost wast deep. You can not believe how bad rotten broccoli smells.
