Hey Foldscopers!  Back with some more microscopic adventures from our Marine Ecology graduate class at Cal State University Monterey Bay.  Because we just can’t stay away from the intertidal zone in this area, we visited Point Pinos in Pacific Grove.  It is the northern end of the Monterey Peninsula and features a large swath of prime intertidal habitat!

Among the first things we found were thousands of by-the-wind sailors ( Velella velella ), small but beautiful free-floating cnidarians related to jellyfish and corals.  These are a “cosmopolitan” species, meaning that they can be found all over the world in areas with the right oceanic conditions.  Although they occasionally wash up onshore in great numbers, they were entirely new to me and I had to examine further!

So apparently these guys belong to a class of cnidarians called hydrozoa, and each one is actually a colony of hydroids.  Hydroids are small polyps that group together and form a structural matrix around themselves, usually made of chitin and other compounds.  It is this material that makes up the beautiful geometric sail that aligns with the direction of the wind to propel Velella across the open seas.  I got some Foldscope photos of the polyps and the surrounding blue pigment:

Awesome.  We saw many other beautiful yet outlandish creatures at Point Pinos as well – Hopkins’ rose nudibranchs ( Hopkinsia rosacea ), multitudes of giant green anemones ( Anthopleura xanthogrammica ), and even a tiny octupus who may have been the common two-spotted Octopus bimaculoides !

So many thanks to the Prakash lab at Stanford for the chance to test drive our very own Foldscopes and spread the word about handheld science!  Our scopes now  have permanent pockets in our backpacks, and they are with us everywhere we go.  Won’t stop exploring any time soon. : )