Corals and Anemones

Oct 12, 2015 • 3:21 AM UTC

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Microorganisms

Matthew Rossi

I'm a novelist, essayist, and a writing consultant. I work in the writing centers at Columbia and Baruch University and explore research into the overlap of maker cultures and writing. My work with the Foldscope tends to focus on finding wild creatures in urban spaces and looking at how human works are shaped by the movements of the biosphere.

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Returning, briefly, to the subject of the ocean, on my last day on St. Simon’s Island this year, I went for a walk around the tide pools and the sand bar in search of any last thing I could find. Washed up in the water, I found what at first glance appeared to be a discarded dried fig. Which seemed an odd sort of snack to find in the water around the beach. I picked it up and was overjoyed to find it was a sea anemone.

I dropped it into my sample container and watched it bloom. Its tentacles created an interesting buzzing sensation on my fingers when I touched them. If I were a bit of plankton, that, of course, would have been my end.
Earlier in the year, I had the opportunity to look at a smaller anemone in NJ, this one attached to a floating bit of seaweed. Imaged with a macro lens (one I harvested from an old and broken camera), one could see the way it had arranged itself, spread out like a small flower.

The geometry of its body was something I had seen mirrored in other anemones growing along the docks. Earlier in the year, I had tried with only moderate success to capture this imaging a pink hydroid from a nearby marina.

A relative of the anemone, these appear at first glance to be simple sea plants drifting in the tide. Looking at their cells under a slide reveals a different appearance.

Clusters of cells arranged like flower petals, but these ready to sting and pull microorganisms in.
I eventually stopped teasing the anemone’s tentacles with my finger and returned it back to the water. There I noticed another object drifting in the water. Like the hydroid, it also looked to be a bit of seaweed, but its texture told me otherwise. It was a nonstony coral colony. These I brought home briefly to look at under high magnification. I managed to catch this video of one member of the colony feeding.

I wish I knew more about their lives. They appear to each be individual organisms sitting alone in their little calcium shells, surrounded by thousands of others, out of contact with each other, pursuing their lives. As a New Yorker, I can relate.