Haystack Rock Awareness Program Nature Blog

Red Ascidians are tunicates, a marine invertebrate with a hard exterior layer, or tunic, where it get's it's name. The first known species of tunicate dates back to 485.4 millions years ago to the early Cambrian period, when most modern phyla first appeared.   The red ascidians have two siphons which move water in and out of it's body, much like a heart. They grow in colonies up to 20 centimeters long and can be a favorite food of the opalescent nudibranch. Have you seen a red ascidian at Haystack Rock? Let us know! Happy Tide-pooling!

Tidepools on the north side of Haystack boasted a startling abundance of nudibranchs in the genus  Dendronotus . "Dendrites" is Greek for "treelike." Upon close examination, these creatures with branching bodies did appear treelike. Individual dendrontid against a background bryozoan. From a distance, however, the dendrontids looked like a dense growth of algae carpeting the floor of the pool.  The "blob" in the left-hand corner is a nudibranch "walking" upside down by moving its foot across the surface tension of the water. The mossy growths covering the sand are clusters of dendrontids in uncountable hundreds. Courtesy of Stephen Grace  

This summer, a U.S.F.W.S. volunteer closely monitored the iconic tufted puffins who call Haystack Rock their breeding ground home. The puffins use this space as their breeding ground, because they prefer to stay close to the ocean shore. Their survival is dependent upon the sea, where they catch the food that they eat and feed their young.    Puffins eat small fish and squid. They can hold several fish at a time in their large bill, which allows them to transport the fish back to their burrow to feed their chick. Recent studies on Atlantic puffins attribute the successful fledgling, and long term survival of chicks to an adequate food source. When fish populations decline, so do the puffin populations.   These puffins lay their egg 2-6 feet deep in a burrow. Near the top of Haystack Rock, on the grassy slope. The north side is shielded from the strong south winds. They dig out the soil with their large, shovel like bill, and lay one single ...

A strange fish caused great excitement at the Rock this last week. A visitor came to the truck to say he'd "found a stingray." When one of our volunteers got to the tidepool, only the eyes in the photo were visible. The fish stayed buried in the sand with only its eyes exposed for about two hours as its pool shrank and warmed. An occasional puff of breath stirred the sand in front of its face. Many visitors stepped to the edge of the pool to stare at its eyes. When the tide came back in and refreshed the pool, the mystery fish finally rose from the sand. It swam around and then reburied itself. The mystery fish is oval, translucent, and this one is about two inches long. Can you guess what species it is?   Courtesy of Stephen Grace