‘I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas’
“The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
--T.S.Eliot
An apt literary snippet in lobster season is not hard to find. Though Eliot was referring to the low mental state of his subject, it’s a beautifully phrased and memorable image. Poetry in motion, literally.
I was struck recently, while browsing through field guides and websites trying to identify sea-shore life we have come across, not only by the intriguing lives of these creatures, but also the oddly poetic names some have been given.
How about a Tide-Pool Scud? I’ve been called worse, says you. These amphipods, tiny cousins of the lobster, can be found by turning over seaweed or rocks at low tide. They do scuttle, but sideways, away to hide as quickly as they can. Ruddy Turnstones, true to their name, know how to get and gobble them up, as do other shorebirds with less exacting names.
The Orange-Footed Sea Cucumber is an awful mouthful isn’t it? Lobsters love them but they can expel their innards thru their rear ends leaving predators with a mouthful of old guts while they slink away to grow new ones.
And what’s with the Inflated Sea Biscuit? A regular Sea Biscuit isn’t enough for it? I have my own theory why this thicker relative of our Common Sand Dollar is so inflated, but suffice it to say that it is found in Florida and not up here.
You might think it’s crunch time for Periwinkles and Whelks whenever you go marching across the intertidal zone. But these tough shelled little mollusks withstand the kick of a hob-nailed boot no problem. Usually they’re in groups latched to rocks, and when you dislodge one to check it out it will shut its door (operculum) in your face. A poor man’s food over the centuries, once cooked they can be prised out with a pin.
The Striate Cup-and-saucer and the Common Atlantic Slippersnail have cute little shells that reflect their names that make you want to put your feet up by the fire with a cuppa and look more closely.
A darker, more sinister gastropod is the Northern Moon Snail. A staple of shell collectors, these voracious predators track down a clam or a mussel, wrap their huge foot around them and start drilling. They then insert digestive juices through the perfect hole they’ve drilled with their toothed tongue (radula) and basically make chowder of the poor clam in its own shell.
Recently we heard clams making noises in the mud like pop-rocks as we walked across the flats. I’m guessing it was them retracting their siphons like submarine periscopes. We haven’t seen them eject little water spouts yet this year but maybe that’s a summer thing.
I skimmed by a Lions Mane Jelly the other day in my kayak. I scooped it with my paddle to have a gander. Their tentacles catch fish like our long lines do, but with sting instead of hook. These ocean drifters are the longest animals in the world, some specimens trailing tentacles 36 meters long, which is longer than a Blue Whale.
At the other end of the scale the miniscule Sea Grape Comb Jelly or Sea Gooseberry can be seen on our beaches almost year round. They are those little transparent blobs you find left on the sand by the retreating tide and wonder are they even living things or some man-made globule of waste. I’m not sure if they survive being marooned but judging by the general hardiness of intertidal denizens, I suspect they just re-float and sail away when the tide comes in.
