The Dismemberment of an Eight-Legged Giant

Our Alaskan ocean, with its cold year-round temperatures and high oxygen content, is home to some of the largest creatures in the world. One enormous mollusk happens to be as intelligent as she is large, and she's all the more intriguing for her eight arms, hundreds of suction cups, and quaint hobby of collecting shiny objects: the giant Pacific octopus.

These clever invertebrates average 16 feet in length and 110 pounds, but the record-holder was measured at 30 feet and 600 pounds! They also live longer than other octopuses, but don't expect much. They last around four years, with both males and females dying shortly after breeding.

Naturalist Kim points out an octopus den at China Poot Bay.

Octopuses live in dens that are submerged at all but the lowest tides. As a bonus, they prefer dens with two holes: both front and back doors.We were lucky to find this den at low tide. When Kim tickled the entrance with her finger, a red tentacle swooped out to investigate.

When searching for octopus dens, keep your eyes out for the midden, a trash pile of helmet-crab exoskeletons and snail shells discarded by the octopus.

Live octopuses are cool and all, but this blog is about a dismemberment, so let's get to the point!

On June 4th, a dead giant Pacific octopus washed up on Otter Rock.

The limp form of a freshly-dead octopus.

When the tide went out, I descended the rocky shore to investigate.

The octopus was smothered by another of our ocean's giants: sunflower stars! I knew these monstrous, soft-bodied stars to be predators of other sea stars, but I knew nothing of their fondness for octopus meat.

My hand for scale. The tentacles was thicker around than my arm, and the sunflower star could have covered my entire face and wrapped around to the back of my head. (I had no intentions of letting it.)

The octopus was stone-dead, but her sucker still held my finger tight was I pressed on it.

This squishy sunflower star was waiting for the tide to come back in so he could move freely over his meal.

My favorite shot. I love the juxtaposition of tube feet and suction cups: the echinodermatan and molluscan solutions for the tasks of moving around and holding on. 

Here's a video of the tube feet in action!

Three days later, the octopus had disappeared from the low intertidal zone and reappeared high-and-dry upon Otter Rock. The pair of bald eagles were spotted dragging and pecking it. The octopus's carbon was redistributed first to deep waters, then to the crown of a spruce tree, and who knows where else.

Each day I asked one of my visitors to be an octopus model -- for scale and, of course, the cute factor.

June 7th: "There it is, but I'm not touching it!"

June 8th: "There it is! Can I touch it?"

On June 8th, it smelled like bacteria were joining the food chain.

The suction cups, however, were still intact.

June 12th: my octopus models were unwilling to get any closer than this. I thought they were still brave, considering the stench and general goopiness.

June 12th was the last day our dear dead octopus was seen. Whether she got dragged into the woods by a bear or deep under the sea by a seal, or was chewed into goo by microbes during the next few tide cycles, we'll never know.

In theory, I knew that elements are recycled and dead things make up the living. But after watching the swift dismemberment of an octopus into the vibrant life of the intertidal zone I admire daily, I feel included in a secret.

On June 25th, I watched one of the three bald eagle chicks flap his wings for the first time.

Now, when I spy on our bald eagle chicks through my binoculars, I think of the octopus midden. In the chicks' emerging flight feathers, I see helmet crabs that became octopus that became eagle.

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Across Kachemak Bay

Four days ago, I was fighting for a national championship with my ultimate team, the Whitman Sweets, at the National College Ultimate Championships in Raleigh, North Carolina. (We made school history and earned a silver medal!)

Three days ago, I was buying my first pair of Chacos in Seattle and stuffing polypropylene leggings into my waterproof duffel bag.

Two days ago, I was flying to Anchorage and then Homer, Alaska and settling in to my bunk room on the second floor of the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies. I met an old friend and teammate for dinner (here in Homer, what wonderful coincidence) and fell asleep at 10:30 pm in broad daylight.

One day ago, I took a boat across Kachemak Bay to the Peterson Bay Field Station, a semi-remote campus of the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies where I'll be living and guiding for the rest of the summer.

We passed Gull Island on our way to Peterson Bay Field Station.

Common murres were conspicuously absent in the water... and then we found them all huddled on top!

Black kittiwakes coated the cliffs and generated a constant pulsing wail.

Tufted puffins bobbed near our boat.

And this morning, I woke up to gossip of boreal chickadees, the indignant peels of black oystercatchers, and the melody of robins.

A bald eagle perches in this snag every day.

A group of eight Alaskan school-teachers are visiting for a three-day Teacher Academy. They'll take back what they learn to provide outdoor education for the students in their classrooms. It's a perfect first group for me because I get to learn about this ecosystem alongside curious educators who ask creative questions and find joy in the mucky details.

Gull Island, a pillow basalt home to thousands of birds.

Otter Rock: can you see the geological sea otter on her back, paws in the air?

Low tide.

Can you identify this dead duck head?

Our steep ramp from the dock to the Field Station.

If you're heading to the beach, take the stairs.

Our drinking water comes thrice-filtered from this steam, but it's still imbued with a rich brown color from leaf tannins.

Today we have a minus 3.2 tide at 7:30 am -- that's really low. We're off to Otter Rock to seek out the Fab Four Phyla and whatever else crosses our path!

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Spaghetti Worms on Sinclair Island

We leaned over the front panel of the aluminum boat in anticipation, pretending to be porpoises or just enjoying the sea smells. Islands dressed in Douglas firs passed us left and right: Guemes, Cypress, Dome. Salish Sea droplets sprinkled our arms and evaporated with the wind, leaving behind powdery jewels of salt.

Our boat landed directly on the rocks of Sinclair Island. In front of us stood a grassy lawn and wooden cabin where we would spend our weekend as grateful guests of Margo, Zach, Mike and Marni Heffron.

 The gang standing atop the lookout tower in the Sinclair Island meadow. From left to right: me, Annie, Mel, Margo, and Zach.

I had a track workout to run for my ultimate team, Seattle Underground, so I did it Sinclair style: sprinting after the back of a tractor.

Zach took the workout to a new level, pouncing onto the tractor like a hungry jaguar.

Annie "Annie Want" Want, everybody. #nevernotcute

Check out the intense baby-blue eyes.

Ms. American Robin eating an earwig.

Mr. White-Crowned Sparrow singing from a post.

Margo took me tide-pooling on her beach...

We were two happy clams.

Fair warning: all the intertidal identifications in this post are based on my favorite field guide, Seashore of the Pacific Northwest, and my own limited experience. Don't take them as certain, and if you see a mistake, don't hesitate to let me know.

This rock had a rockin' hairdo.

I could not find this bubbly brown algae in my field guide anywhere... Then I read the description for the shaggy, needle-like "black pine" (Rhodomela larix) and learned that it is often found with the strictly epiphytic Soranthera ulvoidea growing on top of it. So that's what you see here. There is no limit to the mysteries you can solve in the intertidal.

I found this lovely wrack, either Saccharina latissima (sugar kelp) or Saccharina bongardiana (split kelp), but I am not qualified to differentiate between the two.

Whatever its species, it certainly does have a nice hold on its rock.

Rockweed, a species in the Fucus genus.

A small dungeness crab (Metacarcinus magister) exoskeleton.

Margo convinced Mel and me to stick our tongues into the centers of an aggregating anemone (Anthopleura elegantissima) and they stung for an hour... Don't try it at home.

This red rock crab (Cancer productus) was high and dry on the shore, but it still made eating motions with its claws. I don't think it was healthy.

Limpet with a green mohawk, my dream hair style. Someday...

Frilled dog whelks (Nucella lamellosa) having a snail party.

I was delighted to find a northern clingfish (Gobiesox maeandricus), the research subject of two of my favorite people, Lisa Truong and Christina Linkem. You can follow those links to check out their Friday Harbor Labs research papers and learn all about clingfish ecology.

A red sea cucumber (Cucumaria miniata) with its oral tentacles partially extended. It uses them to filter the water and bring food particles back to its mouth.

The namesake of this post, the infamous spaghetti worm (Thelepus crispus), spread its thin web of tentacles out from the sand like a blob of pasta. I dug it up and discovered its body coated in a protective mud tube.

A baby green urchin (Strongylocentrotous drobachiensis) J-chilling and looking spiny, as it does.

Hello hermie!

We don't have any true eels in the Salish Sea, but this black prickleback (Xiphister atropurpureus) looks kinda like one.

These four fellas arranged themselves nicely for a comparative photo shoot of phyla. From lower left to upper right, we have an arthropod (the kelp crab, Pugettia producta), an echinoderm (the green urchin, Strongylocentrotous drobachiensis), a mollusc (a chiton), and a cnidarian (a closed anemone).

I was thrilled to find a population of healthy, vibrant purple sea stars (Pisaster ochraceus) when most of the species is currently suffering from an epidemic of sea star wasting disease.

Mel uncovers another healthy purple star...

...and helpfully points out the madreporite, the entry point for the sea star's water-vascular system. Sea stars use a mixture of seawater and cells, known as coelomic fluid, to move nutrients around their bodies rather than blood.

Even more abundant were the six-rayed stars, Leptasterias hexactis.

What a cutie.

Oh hey there.

This guy was not doing so well. I wonder how he lost two of his arms -- hopefully not because of wasting disease, since this species appears to be immune.

The coolest discovery of our voyage, in my humble opinion, was this dead fish.

It was huge! And orange! And very dead. After a little research, I believe it was a threatened yelloweye rockfish (Sebastes ruberrimus), one of the largest and longest-lived fishes in the Salish Sea. According to NOAA, they can live up to 118 years.

I relived the glory days of my front-porch lab in Ecuador (for some reason, my most popular blog post ever) as I inspected the fish's anatomy in detail. Here are the pads of spiny teeth on the maxilla, or upper jaw bone.

Here are the gills.

Look at those gill arches and and filaments.

Before the day was over, I took a moment to step back and admire the lovely intertidal zonation of the beach.

Here's a perfect example of an ecotone, a sharp boundary between two ecosystems. You might think of the tree line on a tall mountain, or the edge of a river. Here the ecotone between eelgrass and black pine/ulva seems to be the depth of the rock pool.

As you can see, our excursion to Sinclair Island was a success. Let's go seaweets!

Just as we were pulling away in the aluminum boat, this western tiger swallowtail (Papilio rutulus) showed up for a drink on one of Marni's beautiful pink flowers. See you next time, lady.

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