Half Moon Bay Foldscoping

Jun 30, 2015 • 9:36 AM UTC

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Microorganisms

Alice Dai

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During another field day at the lab, a few of us went to explore the microscopic cosmos at Half Moon Bay. Below is a documentation of the beach creatures we took samples of. But first, here’s a picture of the interns and Jim at San Gregorio beach:

This is an aerial shot of the samples that we took. On the left is a semi-squished sample of a sea worm that we found. The second to the left is seaweed, then a feather, a tiny crab leg, and another part of seaweed on the right:

Up close, the seaweed is vibrant and red and there are gradients of thickness so the light entering the seaweed is different.

The crab leg also has some interesting textures. The picture below is of the tiny hairs that protrude from the legs. Under the microscope it is considerably more structured and hard than what a normal human hair looks like:

We also found a bird feather on the beach, so here’s a sample of its cross-hatched patterning:

Now the most exciting part is the video. As per tradition, we took a video of the living sea worm. You can see it wriggling around and since its body is almost translucent, you can see its inner organs and fluids contracting with its movement. Here’s our setup: