Invertebrates!!

Here are just a few quick pics of some interesting invertebrates I've encountered. I found most of them while tide-pooling.

This large brown slug was crawling up the driveway in the rain.

These mussels are filtering the water in a shallow tide pool.

This small sea star feeds on barnacles. A sea star's mouth is located underneath, in the center of all of its legs. They expel their stomachs and digest their prey outside of their bodies, allowing them to go after prey that is much larger than their mouth.

These tiny urchins enjoy some nearby algae. They too have a mouth located underneath of their body, and are closely related to the sea star.

I found some brightly colored anemones in some of the tide pools. Have you ever touched an anemoe and felt how sticky it is? This is actually because they are launching microscopic harpoons into your skin, called nematocysts. These usually contain toxins and are used to paralyze small prey. The skin on our fingertips is much too thick for the anemones to penetrate, so they just feel sticky to us. Anemones are related to sea jellies, which also have stinging nematocysts.

 

That's all for now! Enjoy the pictures!

Don't Eat This!!

While wandering through the Alaskan wilderness, I've found many interesting and beautiful things. The rainforest is a bountiful place, filled with delicious edibles everywhere you turn. Unfortunately, there are some pretty deadly culprits out there. Feeling suicidal? Here are some of the worst possible things you can eat in Juneau!!

This is called False Hellebore (genus Veratrum). This plant contains highly toxic steroidal alkaloids that when ingested will cause rapid cardiac failure and death. 30 min- 4 hours after eating hellebore, you'll experience nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, numbness, headache, sweating, cardiac arrhythmia and seizures. So if that's what you're looking to experience, make sure to eat either the roots or the rhizomes, since those are the most poisonous parts.

This is Poison Water Hemlock (genus Cicuta). Water hemlocks contain cicutoxin, which acts as a stimulant to the central nervous system. This is one of North America's most toxic plants, so you really shouldn't mess with it. Very small amounts can lead to fatal poisoning. You'll start to experience symptoms within 15 min of ingestion, and even just rubbing it into the skin can kill you.. so don't do that either. Symptoms of water hemlock poisoning include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, tremors and seizures. The seizures are the biggest problem with this poisoning, and are often the first symptom. Prolonged seizures will often result in swelling in the brain, blood coagulation, muscle breakdown and kidney failure. You may also experience hallucinations or go into a coma. Death happens within hours, usually from respiratory failure or uncoordinated heart contractions.

 

This little purple flower is called Monkshood or Wolfsbane (genus Aconitum). This plant contains aconitine, a powerful neurotoxin. The first symptoms occur within the hour. Death soon follows 4-6 hours later. After ingestion, you will soon experience nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. A burning, numbness and tingling around the mouth and face, and a burning in the abdomen are also common. Death is caused by uncoordinated heart contractions, lack of electrical activity in the heart, and paralysis of the heart or respiratory center. Sounds pretty fun, right? Well, guess what.. you can also die just by picking the leaves of this plant, so don't even play with it! The aconitine toxin from oozing sap absorbs easily through the skin- how convenient! A strange tingling sensation will work its way from your fingertips, up your arm to your shoulder and stop your heart without you even having to put it in your mouth. Now how about that?

This plant is called Red Baneberry (Actaea rubra). The dose I hold in the palm of my hand is enough to kill me.. and as few as two berries is enough to kill a small child. Don't worry- I didn't eat them! They're awfully pretty though. The fruit contains ranunculine and the roots contain β-sitosterol glucoside. The berries are the most toxic portion of the plant, but the whole thing is poisonous. Accidental deaths from baneberry are rare since the berries are so incredibly bitter. Ingestion causes nausea, dizziness, increased pulse, and severe gastrointestinal discomfort. The toxins also have an immediate sedative effect on the cardiac muscle tissue, leading to cardiac arrest.

In the case study Bacon, A.E. An Experiment with the fruit of the [Acetaea ruba] . Rhodora 5: 77(1903), baneberry is purposely ingested.. NOT RECOMMENDED! This experimental self-intoxication, however, did not lead to death, so the experience was recorded! So if you'd like to know how it feels to eat baneberry, don't do it! Just read this account instead and spare yourself the trouble.


"At first there was a most extraordinary pyrotechnic display of blue objects of all sizes and tints, circular with irregular edges; as one became interested in the spots a heavy weight was lowered on the top of the head and remained there, while sharp pains shot through the temples.

Then suddenly the mind became confused and there was a total disability to recollect anything distinctly or arrange ideas with any coherency. On an attempt to talk, wrong names were given to objects, and although at the same time the mind knew mistakes were made in speech, the words seemed to utter themselves independently.

For a few minutes there was great dizziness, the body seeming to swing off into space, while the blue spots changed to dancing sparks of fire. The lips and throat became parched and the latter somewhat constricted; swallowing was rather difficult; there was intense burning in the stomach with gaseous eructations, followed by sharp colicky pains in the abdomen and also pain across the back over the kidneys. The pulse rose to 125, was irregular, wiry, tense; the heart fluttered most unpleasantly.

These symptoms lasted about an hour and were followed by a feeling of great weariness, but in three hours from the time of taking the dose all seemed to be again normal"

Pretty crazy stuff.

Here are some nice elderberries. I think you'll be glad to note that if you eat some, you won't drop dead. Yay! You'd have to eat a lot of elderberries over the course of your life in order to cause some serious damage. This plant contains cyanide in its stems, leaves, seeds and roots, so eventually a fatal buildup of cyanide in the body can occur, damaging the liver. I'm told that if I eat parts of this plant regularly, instead of living to be 80, I'll be 60. The berry pulp is safe, but you would have to remove all the fine seeds before ingesting any.

And this is The Sickener (Russula emetica). With a name like that, who wouldn't want to eat it? If you're craving a severe case of vomiting and diarrhea, this is the mushroom for you! It has a red cap, white stalk, and has a strong peppery taste. It won't kill you, however. The sesquiterpenes in this fungus just make you really, really sick.

So that's that. Time for a snack!

Out the Road

Hello everyone! Good news- the rain's cleared up a bit! That means I can go on another little adventure! I've got on my nice warm Bud Light beanie (thanks dad!) and I'm ready to go!

Here in Juneau, there is only one highway that extends throughout the entire town. It's about 40 miles long, and at each side reads a big yellow sign that says "END". You can't drive in or out of Juneau, so the only ways in are by plane or boat.

Well, today I had some free time and decided to take a drive with a friend "out the road". That's what the locals refer to the road that extends out past Auke Bay. Here are some pictures I took along the way.

The 4-lane highway that goes through town soon narrows past Auke Bay into a 2-lane highway that stretches onward through the forest.

Our first stop was at the shrine to St. Theresa. There is a small Catholic church and a few statues located in a secluded area by the shore.

I took this picture of a cross that overlooks the sea.

Our next stop was Sunshine Cove.

The pretty magenta flower that you're seeing is called fireweed.

The name fireweed is derived by its ability to quickly colonize freshly burned areas. Seeds from the plants remain viable in the ground for many years, even when larger trees start to out-compete them. If a fire rushes through the mountainsides and destroys all the larger trees, the fireweed seeds that have survived underground will then quickly spring up and cover the mountains once more. There is a lot of fireweed in Juneau, and it starts to bloom mid to late summer. Soon it will go to seed, turning into little floating cotton puffs. This is a sure sign that summer is about to end. "When fireweed turns to cotton, summer will soon be forgotten."

This busy little bee works on gathering nectar from the plants. The nectar from fireweed is used to create many different products here in Juneau. In the local shops, you can purchase fireweed honey, jam, jelly, candy, and even ice cream!

The next stop was Echo Cove!

And here are some photos along the roadside of Eagle Beach. I did see some eagles, but they were quickly chased off by a group of gulls. Eagles can be push-overs sometimes.

When you reach the end of the road, this is what you'll find:

 

There's the END sign, bullet holes and all! I suppose that shooting the sign is something that locals here do for fun..Well, guess that's as far as I can go for today! Maybe I'll visit the other END sign tomorrow!

Bubble Net Feeding

Bubble net feeding is something that I had only ever read about before I came to Alaska. It's a cooperative feeding strategy used exclusively by humpback whales, and not even all humpbacks know how to do it! There are only a few locations in the world where this occurs, so if you get to see it, it's pretty special.

Here's how it works:

First of all, humpbacks are baleen whales, meaning that they don't have any teeth- they have something called baleen instead.

Baleen is made of the same substance that fingernails are made of. These whales can have up to 800 baleen plates, which have bristly hair hanging off of them. They use these to filter the water for food. Once they take a large gulp of water, they then push it back out through the baleen and anything large enough remains inside their mouth. They then lick the food off the baleen plates and swallow it. Their throats are about the size of a grapefruit, so anything too large could potentially cause them to choke. Humpbacks are careful in their food selection and primarily go after krill or small fish. Here in Juneau, we get to see them feeding on schools of herring.

To catch a school of herring, a group of humpbacks will all work together, moving the fish to the surface where they eventually swim through the school with their mouths gaping open. The whales start on the surface, taking in their last breaths before diving. Under water, some of the whales will begin to swim in a circle, blowing bubbles. These bubbles will form a funnel. While this is taking place, other whales make feeding calls and scare the school of herring into the bubble net. Other whales then work the fish up the net, trapping them against the surface. Eventually, all the whales call out in a loud cacophony of feeding song and lurch up out of the water, mouths agape, and swim through the school.

The whales posses a series of large grooves on the underside of their throats. These allow the whales to expand as they take huge gulps of water.

It's quite exciting to witness a group of whales feeding in this manner. Our boats are equipped with hydrophones, which are underwater microphones, so we can hear the whales as they form their net. We stop the boat, drop the hydrophone off the side, and project the sounds over the PA system for everyone to hear. You know exactly when the whales are going to come up when you can hear them all singing together! And you know where they'll come up if you watch the flocks of gulls. The gulls can see the bubbles from up above, so they swoop down just as the herring are pinned against the surface, right when the whales are coming up.

Here are some pictures that a friend posted the other day, taken with an iPhone.

You can see the whales come up with their mouths open, look into the roofs of their mouths, and see the baleen! It's just remarkable..

Pining for Sunny Days

I thought it would be fun to post some photos. It doesn't always look like this when I take my groups whale watching. If it does, you consider yourself pretty lucky! Today it's pouring rain like it has been for the past several days. I could use a little sunshine right about now, so I'll just have to look back at some nice, sunny days instead.

Here are some shots out of the harbor at Auke Bay, where most of our trips begin.

A picture of the Explorer in action! This is one of our five boats.

Yep, sunny Alaskan days out on the water are pretty special. But you can see that for yourself!

Spotting humpbacks is pretty easy when they're so abundant! Just look for the tall spouts and watch them dive!

Here's another one.

Tail closeup!

And just to top it all off, how about some eagles?

This eagle swoops in for a landing where his mate is resting in the lower branches.

This eagle rests on a sunny rock.

That's all for now. Stay dry out there!