Fylling's Illustrated Guide to Pacific Coast Tide Pools by Marni Fylling

Author:Marni Fylling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Heyday

ISOPODS

(to 1½ inches / low intertidal to subtidal)

The familiar pill bugs you find in your garden are isopods—they even have gills! Their ocean-living cousins can’t roll themselves into balls, but they are excellent swimmers and very hard to find if they keep still. They are the exact color of their edible home—marine algae or surfgrass—and hang tightly to the algae with strong, pointy legs.

SEA SPIDERS

(to ⅜ inch across / low intertidal to subtidal)

With their thick, clawed legs bent at odd angles, yellowish bodies with minuscule abdomens, tiny eyes, and huge sucking proboscises, sea spiders are one of the most alien-looking creatures in the intertidal. Their movements are achingly slow, maybe because their bodies are so tiny that each muscle is only a single cell. There is no room in their abdomens for their digestive systems, so their intestines extend to the tip of each leg. They use their proboscises like straws to suck the juices out of soft anemones, small cnidarians, and tunicates. Male sea spiders have a small pair of extra legs so they can carry developing eggs under their bodies. Sea spiders are not true spiders, though related. Sea spiders that live in the deep waters of the Antarctic swell to almost three feet across and can run around on their long, thin legs.

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