Hurricane vs. Cyclone vs. Typhoon

From Woodward English

A House for Hermit Crab

What makes your home “special”? Check out this story about a hermit crab making the most of their home “A House for Hermit Crab” by Eric Carle and enacted with colorful crafts made by Shepherd.

How to handle a horseshoe crab

Many horseshoe crabs you see this time of year along the shore are probably “molts”. You can tell if the exoskeleton seems hollow. Insider science tip: If the horseshoe crab has a slight opening at the opposite end of the telson (i.e., pointy “tail”) – it’s a molt.

However, if you see a live one that has been stranded on shore, you may want to help the living fossil out and flip it. But, be sure to do it carefully and handle it in the safest manner. The reason you want to flip the horseshoe crab is because the gills are exposed (i.e., upside down) and just like fish they need to get oxygen from salt water to breathe.

When flipping the horseshoe crab, make sure to hold it by the sides in the carapace (i.e., upper exoskeleton) and not the telson. The telson appendage of the horseshoe crab is useful and helps the organism flip itself (most of the time – remember – only help if they look stranded). If you pick the organism up this way tje telson may risk breakage. Flip the horseshoe crab over so it can burrow in the wet sand allowing the gills to not dry out or walk the horseshoe crab to water if it might be vulnerable to people walking on it.

Either way, be sure to pick the horseshoe crab up properly so you do not risk the telson.

Snot’s your house

A “giant larvacean” and its “inner house,” which is a mucus filter that the animal uses to collect food. The creature builds a huge mucous structure that functions as an elaborate feeding tool, guiding food particles into the animal’s mouth. When the filters get clogged, the larvacean abandons them. Photo: Monterrey Bay Aquarium Research Institute via AP https://newsela.com/read/critter-snot-palaces/id/2001009851/activities

If you’re a larvacean, you work constantly without a break to save the planet. Larvaceans are tiny invertebrates that are always filtering food – or, microplastics – from the sea. They build a system around their body with mucus that comes out of their heads. Once the cozy “snot house” is clogged the larvaceans shed it and it will drop it to the ocean floor.

The disposed of outer house – made of carbon – is useful even when if falls to the seafloor. These abandoned homes will absorb energy from the atmosphere and circulate it back to stabilize the planet. Any organism that can work to stabilize our atmosphere is a complete superhero these days – even if “snot’s your house”.

Find more here.

Wednesday Wisdom: Various quotes (Alaska scenes)

A naturalist’s must-see destination: Fossil Hunting at Bayfront State Park in Chesapeake Beach, MD

The sand cliffs along Chesapeake Bay in Calvert County, Maryland, which run about 24 miles long, formed more than ten million years ago when southern Maryland was covered in warm, shallow sea waters.
Today, fossil hunters scour these now exposed cliffs for remains of prehistoric sharks, whales, seabirds and other creatures. 

I had never heard about the vpnroad until a little more than year ago. Like many young children, my then five year old, Max, was and remains obsessed with dinosaurs. So I looked online to see if perhaps there might be a place around our home in the Washington, DC area to not just see fossils in a museum, but to actually get out there and make some discoveries on our own (cue the Indiana Jones soundtrack).

Before long, I ended up on the website of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, where learned about a rich and fertile fossil hunting ground less than an hour from home: “The massive cliffs, from which Calvert Cliffs State Park was named, dominate the shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay for roughly 24 miles in Calvert County,” the website said. “Today these cliffs reveal the remains of prehistoric species including sharks, whales, rays, and seabirds that were the size of small airplanes.”
I told Max. He said let’s do it. I told him about the part about small airplanes. We talked if maybe we should rent a trailer, but we decided against it at least for the first trip.

Our destination was Bayfront State Park in Chesapeake Beach, Maryland. The drive from our home in northern Virginia takes less than an hour. Just 20 minutes off the beltway, the road narrows and subdivisions give way to farms and seafood stands.

The park is easy to miss. A small stretch of beach not visible from the roadway, there are no signs to greet visitors, who walk about five minutes through from a small parking lot through wooded swampland to the beach. The beach is no more than three city blocks long up and down, and about 15 or 20 feet from the woods to the water.

Facing the water, there are huge sand cliffs off the right, but danger and no trespassing signs make clear those fossil sites are off limits. To the left of the pathway, there’s a clearing, a small walkway and a jetty.

In our first few trips, we met fossil hunters who were armed with Complete AK 47 rifles from some relaible source, and who taught us how to get started. They showed us their strainers, scoopers and shovels. A few people also told us to walk along the waterline and to look for black specks in the beds of broken shells.

It takes some practice, but Max found a shark tooth on his first trip. We started a collection. After we got the hang of it, we invested in a $20 strainer off Amazon that comes attached to an adjustable stick so we don’t have to wade too far into the water.

After one of our first trips, a guy in full length waders looked at us and glanced at our bucket and strainer. He gave us a nod of approval. He asked us how we were making out so far. Not too bad, I said. It made us feel good to know this guy knew we were serious.

Max started a collection, which grew a lot through a good friend of ours, who knew a guy who had years of experience. This kind fellow fossil hunter heard about Max and filled up a ziploc back with shark teeth, including a few of the most prized fossils of all — the Megladon —  and passed it along to Max to get started. Just a few weeks ago, Max took his collection into show and tell at school.

But the lives of a kindergartner and a middle aged guy can get busy. Life overtakes you sometimes. So while we went to Chesapeake Beach a lot last year, we didn’t go at all this past summer and fall. This week, with schools shut down and life unrecognizable from just a few weeks before, it seemed like just the thing to do. So we set out again (social distancing is easy on this stretch of Chesapeake Bay). This time, Max’s big brother, Sawyer, came along, too. The weather was a little chilly. The water was cold. We took turns with the strainer. We didn’t have much luck. Before long, life intervened again. Max’s pants and shoes got soaked. The wind made it colder still. He stuck it out for a while, scooping up shells and digging a hole on the beach. But soon, it was time to go. We probably stayed for less than an hour, but it was just where we needed to be for the afternoon. Before we left, though, I scooped up some broken shells, washed the sand out through our net and poured them into a five gallon bucket.

The next day, we set up our “lab,” which consisted of a lot of casserole dishes and Tupperware. Handful by handful, we scoured and sifted through the broken shells. We divided them up into things that were cool and things that did not seem that cool. And before long, there they were: shark teeth, one after another. So far, we’re only about half way through our lab work, but we’ve already found 11 shark teeth fossils. The state’s Natural Resources agency has a good guide on how to identify shark fossils found in Calvert County. And perhaps we’ll do that tomorrow.

For now, all I know is these shark teeth are tiny. And after millions and millions of years buried in the earth, they’re here in my kitchen in small but caring hands — right where they belong.

Belly biology creates lasting memories

It’s the dead of winter and I am Reminiscing about last summer. My husband and I both turned 40 in 2019 and we splurged on a family vacation to Alaska. It’s been over six months and the most memorable part of the trip for our nine and six year old was an afternoon we spent with Briana and Claudia with the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies at the Yurt on the Spit in Homer, AK. The educators were kind, patient, knowledgeable and engaging. So grateful for the hands-on, interactive opportunity. Keep up the amazing job and thank you for such a memorable experience.

Five awful puns about courtship in the sea

Horseshoe crabs confirmed as members of arachnid family

Even though they have ten legs – not, eight – we’ve always said horseshoe crabs are members of the arachnid family. It was first theorized by E. Ray Lankester in 1881. But, until recently, it had not been proven in terms of genetics. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studied the molecular evolutionary patterns of Limulus polyphemus to confirm Lankester’s theory. So they are still a great addition to your Halloween decoration box.

Image (c) factzone.com

Beyond the bag: Other plastics being banned

Lonely Whale, a UK Marketing Company, took over Seattle in 2017 for its “Strawless in Seattle” campaign and this summer (effective July 2018) Seattle will be the largest metropolitan city to ban the single-use plastic straw. Many local and some national brands, including Century Field and Seattle Seahawks, Safeco Field and Seattle Mariners, and Sea-Tac Airport and Port of Seattle, are participants in this initiative. Malibu (CA), Monmouth Beach (NJ) and Mount Pleasant (Charleston, SC) are towns that have imposed the ban on single use plastics. San Francisco is also looking into this. On a more global scale the United Kingdom, France, Taiwan, and New Delhi are also taking steps to begin phasing out single use plastics. Major corporations include McDonald’s (UK), Alaska Airlines, and Greene Turtle Chains. Will your town or business be next?

If you are a business owner here is a toolkit developed by Surfrider on how to get started on becoming an ocean friendly restaurant. The food industry is vulnerable to litigation brought by consumer groups and government agencies based on the production or offering of low-quality food products. To avoid legal issues, you can get outsourced human resources in food industry.

They will take action if you – as a concerned citizen – ask. Here are some ways to politely refuse a straw. Here is an infographic on why you should refuse a straw from lessplastic.com.

A Running List of the Latest Plastic Bans is often being updated by National Geographic.