B and I are walking the beach on Marrowstone Island two mornings ago.
I keep finding shells with a dark marking in the center of the interior and nice shiny interior. Then I find a shell with the other half attached. The other half has a hole in it.
I look it up. He has a flip phone. I has a modern phone, chosen by my adult children. Now that I am middle aged, I ask for help on this modern crap.
This site comes up: http://www.bily.com/pnwsc/web-content/Northwest%20Shells.html. Wow. We filter through it and the shell is in the family Anomiidae. Specifically Pododesmus macrochisma, aka Green False Jingle. It attaches to rocks or other jingles or whatever through the hole. Then it disguises itself. The outside of the shells I found was diverse, some with barnacles. I found a young one, pink, and the radial ridges are visible on the shell.
Cool! Next I tried to identify the two different kinds of chitons. Uh-oh. There are LOTS of chitons. I ran out of air very quickly, another day. I also returned two sea cucumbers to the sea. The second one scrunches up when I pick her up with a piece of seaweed. When I put the second one in the water, she relaxes. The first one was probably already dead.
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