Tidepool tentacles.

Look at that zeppelin!! Rockfish give live birth to larval stage young (they are about 3mm or so at birth), as opposed to broadcasting eggs into the plankton like many other fishes. This blue rockfish is feeling the pregnancy woes.
#rockfish
#sebastes
#mpa
#pregnant

Not much is more scenic than some rockfish cruising in a giant kelp forest.
#giantkelp
#Sebastes
#rockfish
#mpa

The feeding strategy of the spiny mole crab (Blepharipoda occidentalis). They use their appendages to rake plankton from the water as they are safely buried. Sea otters will dig up and eat these crabs, so they aren’t that safe. Also, they are Anomurans, so not true crabs. They are definitely spiny.

A hermit crab dragging a smaller hermit crab in Morro Bay.

#hermitcrab
#morrobay
#mpa

A few years back the canary rockfish numbers were low enough for a fishery closure. They have made a decent comeback and it was reopened just a few years after the closure. This is a less than one year old fish. #Sebastespinniger #yoy #mpa #canaryrockfish

Counting fish on the transect line. This site is heavy with painted greenlings and various sculpins. Not too many years ago this site was home to a dense kelp bed of Macrocystis and Nereocysis with a Laminaria and Pterygophora understory. Now the fish grub a living off this urchin wasteland.

This one is sitting in a small island of vegetation surrounded by urchin barrens on all sides…its prospects look bleak.

It’s a lovely pinto abalone (Haliotis kamtschatkana) in 12 feet of water off the central coast of California. Many areas of the coast have been ravaged by an over abundance of purple urchins that have wiped out much of the algae that animals like abalone depend on for survival….

Went up the coast to look at some new to me reef structure. It looked pretty good. Lots of life and lots of diversity.

One of the fish transect lines goes by this cave that always has this huge monkeyface prickleback in it. Today he had some company over.