A View From the Wrack Line (2015)

Walking the beach, down in the swash or up in the wrack line, I’m wondering what the rivers, currents, winds, and surf will bring to my home beaches. This year the drift was full of treasures. Some had human origins, and there were lots of items from marine and terrestrial sources too. Lots of carcasses, of course. Anything that washes up has a story. Here’s a sample of photos from my Wrack Line  2015 page illustrating what caught my attention in 2015.

Know your bony fish anatomy?

Western grebe

Crab buoy

Spotted ratfish

Black-legged kittiwake

By-the-wind sailor, Velella velella

American shad, Alosa sapidissima

Egregia meziesii stipe with floats

rat-tailed sea cucumbers, Paracaudina chilensis – from a summer beach cast event

Small pelagic goose barnacles on a Macrocystis blade

Shell barnacles on a Cancer productus carapace

Macrocystis has a float at the base of each blade

Stowable wheeled bed

Surfgrass, Phyllospadix

Taking the beach

Common murre

Larval stage, Thinopinus pictus, “see ya”

Sitka spruce cone

Cormorant

Dungeness crab carapace

Lot of of greedy ravens left those tracks

Beach hoppers rejoice – a drift line dominated by eelgrass, Zostera

Leymus, dunegrass, creeping down off the foredune onto the backshore

Cellophane tube worm casings, probably Spiochaetopterus costarum

That’s a glimpse of the 2015 wrack line though my eyes.

If you know what the pink worm-like creature is, please let me know. If you know somebody who might know, please share it around with my contact information; I’d really like to find out more about it. Only about 4 – 4.5 cm long, they appeared by the 1000s in beach cast events in northern Oregon and Washington this summer. Thanks