Whytecliff Park Anemone Dive 28/09/2016

After the Sea Star Wasting disease incident (which seemed less serious but still present), one of my friends Vlad Chernavsky noticed plumose anemones missing from the rocks of Whytecliff Park. The tell-tale sign was a bare black circle of rock where the anemone used to be. The black circles were quite easy to see, but what was causing them? Dead anemones were not readily seen.

In an impromptu Citizen Science effort, members of GUE-BC and Jessica Schultz from the Vancouver Aquarium met at Whytecliff Park to gather some data. The plan was to use 1 meter square quadrats and do counts of anemones along a transect. Jessica went above and beyond developing a full research plan on how the measurements would be done. Very nice!

After some practice in the park, the data collection went quite well.

Heather got some good pictures, as usual.

Getting ready to descend.

A friendly shrimp.

Some stubby squid eggs (I think!).

A very pretty Red Flabellina.

And a quite large sailfin sculpin. I never would have spotted it until Heather pointed it out!

All in all it was a good cause, and a fun time. More data collection was needed, so we would be out again for sure!

Finally, we met a very friendly shrimp. It seemed to want to come home with us!