05/31/2026
Even the rain couldn’t keep me off the docks in Monterey! Here’s some of my favorite finds from adventuring with and .muncher .
1. The Spanish Shawl nudibranch! I’m so used to how cryptic many of our Washington sea slugs are that it was such a delight how they orange and purple beauties are like living billboards on the dock just shouting at you to come get a look. I saw five of them, including one mid-hydroid snacking.
2. Grooved Mussel Crab - this little friend was swimming around in the water column. I thought it was really cool that Monterey has them just like I do back home.
3. Seed Shrimp aka Ostracod - I’ll never get over how cute these little guys swim. I was also shocked it stopped long enough for a microscope pic.
4. Californian Strawberry Anemones - these are just so pretty I wanted to take a million photos of them. I’m obsessed with the texture on their tentacles and also their colors. 💗🤍🧡
5. Monterey Dorid - so fitting to find a Monterey Sea Lemon in Monterey. It was so cute and tiny, smaller than my pinky nail.
6. Opalescent Nudibranch - as I was photographing these ones I was thinking I might have some confused friends on iNaturalist if they didn’t realize I was posting from a different location. Up in the Salish Sea we have this ones cousin, the thick horned or northern opalescent, which has a white line down each cerata.
7. Stripe Shore Crab - I love this ones teal color and stripes and how it was hanging out in these beautiful sculptural bryozoans.
8. Tiny jelly to be identified - this one had to have been the prettiest hydromedusae I have ever seen. It was speckled in what I think may have been stinging cells on the bell and had these gorgeous yellow radial canals with red dots around the rim. Just stunning.
9. Baby ctenophore - we saw two of these and they were .muncher’s first wild ctenos.
10. Siphonophore, maybe Prayidae - we saw so many of these single swimming bells with yellow siphosomes.
11. Tiny jelly full of xoanthellae - maybe a Velella medusae
12. Salp!!!
13. Swimming sea cucumber with 14. Scaleworm friend
