Fighting Corals

Corals exemplify a common characteristic among animals -- they fight when confronted by "foreign" tissue.  Corals are composed of individual yet connected zooids basically constructed much like anemones.  Corals of different species will grow very close to one another in competition for space.  As they come into contact.  the bordering zooids of each species will attack one another.  One of the two colonies may overcome the other or it may result in a standoff where neither encroaches any further.  Their relative aggressiveness was determined by experiment in the laboratory but has not proved to be predictable in the field.

--David K. Bulloch,  "The American Littoral Society Handbook for the Marine Naturalist"
  Published 1991

Ocean Giants

Kayaking with the manatees at Apollo Beach

Manatees flock to the warm waters at the Apollo Beach power plant.  

People flock to the inside viewing areas and kayakers sometimes

get the chance to see these magnificent mammals up close.

Photos from W. Craig Tucker

Scientists find new feeding hotspots for turtles

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2012/feb/07/scientists-find-new-feeding-hotspots-turtles/

- Naples News

Living Sanibel: The Black Skimmer

http://www.islandreporter.com/page/content.detail/id/517571/Living-Sanibel--The-Black-Skimmer.html?nav=5011

- Sanibel-Captiva Island Reporter

Jellyfish launch seasonal invasion of South Florida beaches

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/08/17/2362932/stinging-jellyfish-invade-south.html
- Miami Herald

Live Bay Scallop (August 2008)

The bay scallop grows to 3".  One valve is white, the other dark.  Once common in Tampa Bay, they then vanished.  This is the first one Dave Bulloch saw in Sarasota Bay in eleven years of seining.
We hope that Sarasota Bay Watch's 4th Annual Great Scallop Search  found  a few scallops today. 

 

Note the blue scallop eyes in the close-up above. (Above photos by Dave Bulloch)

The closer-up photo below is from a Duke University Physics website.

"Scallops have eyes (the blueberry-like object on right) that instead use reflection of light by a curved spherical mirror to form an image."  --http://www.phy.duke.edu/~hsg/54/

Willet

This willet, about 1 foot tall and in winter colors, looks drab. In flight, it will show a striking wing pattern in black, white, and brown. Sandpipers are relatives.