Shannon Point

I think that the trip to Shannon point was a really unique experience in general, I have always been curious as to what is living in the water so close to home but I have always been terrified of water, it was nice to finally conquer a  fear and explore a little bit! I think my favorite part of the entire experience was being out on the boat and filling a tub up with a whole bunch of different marine life. Having a chance to see creatures like shrimp and flatfish up close was really interesting because these were some organisms that I have never seen alive before and being able to have a hands on learning experience gave me a chance to get to know them better.

Out on the boat, the two organisms that stood out to me were the pink shrimp and flatfish. They were placed in a pan full of water out on the boat so they were not doing a whole lot besides swimming around. I personally believe that flatfish don’t have a specific role that impacts an ecosystem, but I believe that it can be a very helpful species feeding on other organisms and maybe even decomposing objects on the floor of the body of water. They could very well be the mushroom equivalent of fish. On the other hand I think that pink shrimp do play a fairly important role in the ecosystem because they may act as a keystone species by being a major food source for others living in that same body of water.

In the lab the organisms I took a liking to was the sea pen and the opalescent nudibranch (the sea slug). They were really interesting organisms to look at because they had extremely bright colors and they are organisms that I didn’t even know existed! (I lived in the middle of farmland for 14 years so it’s fairly new to me still). In the bins they were in the sea pen didn’t appear to move at all, but the nudibranch was moving fairly slowly across the bin. Sea pens to me appear as if they are like the plants of the marine world, most likely “rooted” in the body of water floor. So I thought that maybe they play a similar role that plants do, helping with chemical balances in the water and soil. I’m unsure as to how a nudibranch plays a role in an ecosystem. Like the flatfish it seems to be a bottom feeder as well.

The most interesting thing I saw on this trip was every form of marine life that was brought up for us to observe. Like I mentioned earlier this is the first place that I have lived that is remotely close to a large body of water, that isn’t a lake, and being terrified of water I have never been to excited to explore what lives around Washington. But this is exactly what I took this class for. I got hands on experiences with so many new organisms I was just really excited, and they were so diverse I thought it was really incredible, that of everything I saw on this trip I only saw two kinds of fish, everything else was really different. This changed my view on the coast of the PNW because I always thought that there was really only star fish, salmon and other fish, and crabs in our waters but there is so much more, it’s just hiding a little further below the surface.

The Question I do have is what role does the nudibranch play in an ecosystem? If any. I’ve tried to do some research on it since our trip to Shannon point but I was unable to find anything on it and I am really curious.