Anemones and other surprises

This past week was so jam-packed with intriguing sights and remarkable animals that we don’t know where to start writing. We’ll just take it chronologically.

Last Wednesday, I took a new crew from the Orange County Conservation Corps to Bolsa Chica to clear weeds and plant native plants. The crew was both fascinated and repelled when Laura Bandy, the Bolsa Chica Conservancy’s education director, found a recently killed opossum in the wetlands. She pointed out the “crime scene” evidence to them. Sprays of blood, fur flung about, matted grass and a partially eaten possum carcass suggested a recent kill by a hawk or owl. A coyote would have eaten the whole thing.

The corps members -- Cody, Denisse, Johnny, Michael, Mike and Vince -- made short work of the star thistle and wild radish, hauling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of it to the dumpster. By noon, they had finished clearing the project site and had planted all of the coyote brush and coast goldenbush that had been purchased for that day’s restoration project by the Bolsa Chica Conservancy. We took a break at Bolsa Chica State Beach to search for shells before weeding new radish sprouts that had popped up in another recently planted area by Pacific Coast Highway and Warner Avenue.

The next day, I took the crew to Crystal Cove State Park to work with Benny Ramirez and Dan van der Elst. Benny and Dan had 250 coastal sage scrub plants to put in the ground and were happy to have our help. This corps crew was very good at noticing critters. They found a baby tarantula, a big black millipede and a long centipede with a red head, blue legs and blue bands on a tan back. When Vic saw the digital photo of the centipede the next day, he quickly identified it as a Scolopendra polymorpha, variously called a tiger, common desert or blue-legged centipede.

At low tide, the crew and I went down to the tide pools. A rocky intertidal zone is far more biologically diverse than a sandy intertidal zone. Sandy beaches have kelp, bean clams and many kinds of clam shells. However, most of the living clams are under the sand where they can’t be seen. Tide pools hold a photographer’s paradise of colorful seaweeds, hermit crabs, limpets, snails, anemones and tiny fish darting from under rocks.

I photographed marine invertebrates as fast as the crew found them for me. I was surprised when I looked at the pictures later to find that they had found two species of hermit crabs: blueband and hairy. The blueband hermit crab has bright blue bands on its walking legs and red antennae. The hairy hermit crab has white bands on its walking legs and distinct white bands on brown antennae. The crew also spotted a purple sea urchin and a large red rock crab, both fairly unusual finds.

The crew was fascinated by the abundant sea anemones, which use tentacles to sting small fish and invertebrates. The anemone then closes up, stuffing the prey into its mouth, which is located in the center of a tentacle-ringed disk. These animals look like green flowers, and therein lies a tale.

Vic and I recently purchased two terrific field guides to southern California marine life. One is “The Beachcombers Guide to Seashore Life of California” by J. Duane Sept. The other is “Beyond the Beach Blanket” by Marina Curtis Tidwell. The books differ in organization and species covered, so we use them both.

I was serenely confident that the anemones at Crystal Cove and Corona del Mar were green anemones (Anthopleura xanthogrammica). They were, after all, green. But the photo in “Beyond the Beach Blanket” that most resembled our anemones was clearly labeled “sunburst anemone,” with the scientific name of Anthopleura sola. I had never heard of the beast. Neither had Vic. A quick Google search revealed that it is new to science as of the year 2000.

The sunburst anemone is green, but it has pink tips on the tentacles and red lines radiating out in a sunburst that stretches from the mouth out toward the tentacles. The bumps on its stalk are in regular rows, unlike the random bumps that characterize the green anemone.

The sunburst anemone originally was thought to be a large and solitary subspecies of the aggregating anemone, which clusters tightly next to its neighbors in a friendly fashion. However, the sunburst anemone is an aggressive loner. It will sting another anemone that creeps up close in order to make it move away. Yes, they move, albeit infinitesimally slowly.

Vic and I wondered if all of the anemones that we thought were green anemones were, in fact, sunburst anemones. The mystery had to wait. On Saturday, I had another restoration day at Bolsa Chica. I supervised a science class from Marina High School that had come to help the Bolsa Chica Conservancy install 140 salt marsh plants in the wetlands. Vic had a bird class to teach. By the time we were finished, the tide had come in and it was too late for tide-pooling.

On Sunday, we searched Crystal Cove’s rocky pools at low tide. Every sea anemone that we found was a sunburst anemone, with nary a true green anemone in sight. There is always something new to learn in nature.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at vicleipzig@aol.com.

20051117gzerw1keNo Caption20051117iokyhsknKENT TREPTOW / INDEPENDENT(LA)Mario Romero, 17, plants California buckwheat at the Bolsa Chica wetlands. Members of the California Conservation Corps have been replacing invasive plant species with native vegetation.