With hundreds of Razor pod shells washed along with countless Tellins, and Venus spp shells it was great to also see, for my first time, thousands of By-the-wind Sailor, Velella velella, despite the appearance of the living animal this is not a Jellyfish, but rather a colony of individual polyps a pluestonic animal. All that was visible today were the papery skeletal remains but nevertheless an attractive looking creature.
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| By-the-wind Sailor |
Another first for me for the beach was a tiny Common Starfish, Asterias rubens.
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| Common Starfish |
An unusual shaped Cuttlefish bone, oval shaped with a prominent spine and a tinge of pink, possibly the Elegant Cuttlefish, Sepia elegans.
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| ElegantCuttlefish (bone) ? |
I also found a "sea bean", at first I thought it was a Sea Mouse, Aphrodita aculeate, but realised it was a seed pod, after opening it I extracted the bean, it awaits identification.
If anyone has an idea email me at: paul.pembreylnr@outlook.com
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| Sea Bean ? |
That seed looks very interesting - Richard will be very interested in it. We saw a few Elegant Cuttlefish at Rhossilil too
ReplyDeleteJust checked and the cuttlefish I saw looked more like orbignyana
ReplyDeleteHi Barry, when I first identified the cuttlefish I thought it was orbignyana, and even put it in the blog as that, then I looked on a webpage and decided that the spine was too short, was the spine on your specimen longer?
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