Exploring the nearby docks never gets old. Of course, when I look though water samples and plankton net tows, I expect to find marine organisms. I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was to find a flying insect caught in a plankton net a few weeks back.

Now, I’m no entomologist, so I don’t know what exactly I found, other than and insect with one pair of wings. Still it’s pretty to look at (check out it’s wings!), and it also brings up an important point about nutrient cycling in the coastal areas.

Coastal zones are an important vector for nutrients to cycle between the land and the sea. A lot of nutrients actually come from the sea onto land. Nutrient cycling is usually thought of in terms of carbon and nitrogen exchanges. Pelagic birds eat fish from the ocean, then roost on land. Their guano becomes a point of nutrient transfer. Anadromous fish such as salmon swim into freshwater areas and are eaten by bears. And, as we see here, insects will fall into the ocean, bringing terrestrial nutrients into the marine environment.