This week we are studying marine worms and so we decided to take a trip up north to Martin County to see the Sabellariid worm reefs at Bathtub beach.

Well, we drove to Palm Beach county (about 3 hours north), spent the night with relatives, and the next day headed to Martin County (another hour) to see the reefs. We got there about noon to find a sign saying …

“Bathtub Beach Reef  Park is closed for construction”.

Phooey! I guess we should have planned ahead a bit better, eh? Ah, the pros and cons of spontaneity!

But we were able to get access to a nearby beach and see some older, exposed worm reef.  Here it is:

We checked out the reef briefly, and it looked like it was no longer living to us, but we couldn’t see it all because of the incredible waves–I mean really, really big!

which we never get in the Keys, so…

playtime!!!!

Hope your days are just as splendid!

We are doing pretty well here. We finished up cnidaria and ctenophora last week. That was an easy one for us as we have seen a lot of those things!

JBug and I made these Jellyfish stuffies just for fun:

and now we are heading into marine worms. First off, we took a walk down to the water and we saw what we think were some marine worms, but we are not convinced. Must do more investigating to be sure. We took yesterday off marine biology and headed for the Everglades for the day, but tomorrow we will be back at it as we head to Martin County to bathtub beach to check out the unique worm reefs there.

Until then, happy worm hunting!

That’s what Superboy and JBug are this week as they work on their projects on sea beans.

And while Superboy is busy sorting his finds I’ll tell you about the marvelous time we had collecting the beans!

We spent an entire day hitting beach after beach collecting every type of sea bean we could get our hands on, from Key Largo as far south as Bahia Honda!!

The day was perfect, cool and breezy, and the view was lovely out there …

but we were looking the other way…

hunting through the wrack line for beans of all sorts.

We found quite a few sea beans  (which I will let Superboy show you when he is done counting, sorting, and identifying them) but also lots of other neat things:

young ibis, wading

tiny beetle

black mangrove bean sprouting (these were everywhere. Superboy simply lists them in his samples as “too numerous to count”.)

crab molt, who unwittingly became the star of a brief impromptu puppet show by yours truly…

and perhaps the neatest thing of all, just in time for Halloween…

Valonia algae, also known as…

sailor’s eyeball! So cool!

and we are off to another beach, another bean to discover!

FYI: I finally got weekly plans for week 12: Bryozoans and the Continental Shelves up. You’ll find the link on the weekly plans page. Enjoy!

I wish I had one!LOL! But alas, what I mean is that Superboy is a little behind schedule due to some unforeseen interferences: sick kids, injured mom, construction blocking our beach access, and a last-minute invite for Superboy to the Peace river for a paddling/fossil gathering expedition with friends. So, with all that going on, he  has not been able to do the sea grass section of week six yet.

But, since we are homeschoolers we are not bound by any schedule other than our own, so I think we are just going to go ahead and take another week on this topic and do project week next week.

So, there you have it!

Anyone else a little behind?

Wow! We’ve had some productive Fieldworkers lately! If you haven’t visited with the other fieldworker teams, now is the time. There’s good stuff going on all over!

See some great algae finds at Nature’s Sweetness,  Small Wonders, and Susie’s ramblings

Somewhat in the Air has moved on to Cnidaria and has a report and some lovely artwork to show off

Susie and crew have made some delicious sushi,

and Syndiluhu has a  new microscope! Looks like they got to test it out right away hunting plankton along with the Small Wonders crew! Don’t miss her link to instructions for making your own plankton net!

And we at LaPaz have a few new seaweeds to share:

(Penicillus, aka Neptune’s shaving brush, or merman’s shaving brush)

Dictyota sp (which is a cause of concern here in the Keys as it is taking over many of the coral reefs and other fragile habitats)

Here is a close-up of some Sargassum, on which you can see a little colony of bryozoans. Keep this is mind for week 12!

Now…who did I miss??? Bring on the links!!!

Today we hit the road to John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park for one of our week 6 assignments–exploring the mangroves!!!

Gosh, I love this stuff!!!

First, the mangroves themselves. We were able to spot red, black, and white mangroves. Unfortunately we did not get any pics of the whites because the mosquitoes in the upland area were intense and we had to run for our lives!!! It was much better down by the water where the reds and blacks grow.

Here are the red mangroves:

can you see the prop roots extending down into the water?

Here are a bunch of propagules that have drifted into the sand and are beginning to take root.

above, a propagule up close, and below a red mangrove flower

And the black mangroves:

You can easily identify them by the many pencil-like pneumataphores coming out of the ground below them.

Black mangrove seeds on the branch (above) and partially sprouted (below)

Then we geared up and went snorkeling to see what we could see in the tangle underneath!

There was so much to see! I only wish I had an underwater camera so I could get pictures of all of the amazing creatures we saw under the mangroves. WOW!!!! But alas, a simple list is all I have to share, with some links to pics by other folks:

• mangrove tunicates (gorgeous!)
• flat tunicates
• encrusting social tunicates
• several types of bryozoans
• every shape and size of sponges in red, orange, yellow, blue, and black–beautiful!!
• variegated feather duster worms (fascinating!)
• branching fire coral (YIKES!)
• blushing star coral
• pale anemones
• medusa worm
• young barracudas
• mangrove snappers
• parrot fish
• blue striped grunt
• a planehead file fish (so cute!)
• needle fish
• upside down jellyfish
• many, many small unidentified minnows in large schools
• and lots of beautiful algae, of course!

Oh, how I wish I had pictures of all that gorgeous stuff!

Here are a few things I was able to get pictures of:

a bad pic of a young great barracuda (only about a foot or so long)

a dead mangrove crab (Scylla serrata ?)

Four-toothed nerite

What a wonderful and very full day!

Yum!

Check out what Syndiluhu found in her ice cream!

(hint: it is brown and rubbery and grows in the sea. And it is probably in your ice cream, too!)

Just wanted to let you know that I had to make some small changes on week 6 lesson plans. There were some broken links so I had to replace them with new resources. All of the info and everything should still be comparable. Just a FYI for those heading into week 6.

Please let me know if you encounter any broken links or any other issues so I can fix them up!

Thanks!

We are up to our elbows in algae and loving it!

Here are a couple more samples we collected. More tomorrow as we head to yet another beach further south (oh, the sacrifices we homeschooling mom’s must make…)

Anyway…

This (above) is Halimeda (one of the calcareous algae on p 32 of The Seaside Naturalist)

And this is our second species of Caulerpa ( Caulerpa sertularoides, aka ” feather algae“).

And don’t miss our sushi adventures on my main blog.

Who knew seaweed could be so much fun!!??!!