The Rainbow Colors of the Salish Sea

The Solstice finally arrived, yet our days are still short and often gray. It’s a good time to remember the rainbow colors in our Salish Sea. I recently presented a slide show to the Port Townsend Marine Science Center volunteers, showing a dozen photos per color of the rainbow. A friend suggested I share a sampling with you.

Red: Pacific Lion’s Mane Jelly. The bell, or body, of this Pacific Lion’s Mane Jelly (Cyanea ferruginea) was about a foot across. Usually I find Pacific Lion’s Manes washed up after they have died, about one to two feet across, with their tentacles washed away, and yet they’re still glowing and beautiful. This one was alive, pulsing along when I was wading during a minus tide. I’ve also seen them alive from my kayak. In the Arctic, some Lions’s Mane Jellies can be almost eight feet across, and the tentacles can trail a hundred feet. The Lion’s Mane Jelly may use its color as a warning, because its tentacles are stinging. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a Sherlock Holmes story called “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane,” with a mysterious murder. I won’t reveal how the poor victim in the story died.

Orange: Daisy Brittle Star . The Daisy Brittle Star (Ophiopholis kennerlyi) lives under rocks in the intertidal, like this very colorful one I found at Salt Creek County Park in Clallam County. It’s so small, only two inches across, and looks so fragile, and like its name, brittle, but it can live in depths to 6,600’.

Yellow: Tidepool Snailfish. The Tidepool Snailfish (Liparis florae) is quite small, at most a few inches, and when it stops swimming, it curls its tail around its body. Its eye looks like a little star. I’ve found snailfish in tide pools that were yellow, pink, and once striped brown and white. I always thought snailfish were adorable and small. Then one day I saw a Great Blue Heron capture an enormous snailfish, and swallow it whole: rainshadownorthwest.com/2022/11/27/our-pescatarian-birds-part-2/

Green: Pink-tipped Green Anemone. The Pink-tipped Green Anemone, as noted in its scientific name, (Anthopleura elegantissima), is very elegant. Also known as Aggregating Anemones, they can clone themselves, and they can be fierce. Huge colonies of clones can be at war with neighboring colonies. You can see thousands of these on Indian Island if you walk very carefully under the bridge during a minus tide. They are often small, about the size of a silver dollar and they can be as big as an Oreo cookie. I recently saw some photos of three Anthopleura anemone species under ultraviolet light and they’re also fluorescent!

Blue: Here’s the bluest Flattop Crab (Petrolisthes eriomerus) I’ve ever seen. To identify this small, flat porcelain crab, you normally look for a little bit of blue on its mouthparts and joints. You can find this crab under rocks in the lower intertidal. Please leave it in place; it’s called a “porcelain crab” because it drops off its legs when terrified by a predator or curious human.

Indigo: The Sunflower Sea Star (Pycnopodia helianthoides) is one of the biggest and fastest in the world, and a top predator, with up to 24 arms that can span up to three feet. They seem to glow, and they can be orange, brown, or what we’ll here call indigo! Before Sea Star Wasting nearly made them extinct, they were common around here. The PTMSC Aquarium kept several in a big tank. But 99% have died from Sea Star Wasting. In the past two years I’ve only seen three, and only on Indian Island. All were young, which is good news, and I heard they are coming back near Port Angeles. There’s hope. For four years, scientists led by by Dr. Jason Hodin have been raising tens of thousands for release in a captive breeding program at UW’s Friday Harbor Lab. If you missed the PTMSC lecture by Dr. Hodin in October, and want to know more, you can listen to an interview with him by Nan Evans on KPTZ’s Nature Now: https://kptz.org/2023/10/04/639-sea-stars/

Violet: The stiff spines of the Purple Sea Urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) are bright purple, or violet. Like other echinoderms, the Purple Sea Urchin has flexible tube feet, and these are purple, like its spines, and longer. Tube feet not only help the urchin move, they also are used to grasp food, and they are part of its respiratory system. This sea urchin is abundant at Salt Creek, but I haven’t found any around here. Of the four sea urchin species that live in this part of the Pacific Northwest, the only one I’ve ever found locally is the Green Sea Urchin. Since we’re talking about rainbows, a better name for it would be the Green and Indigo Sea Urchin.