So, while sorting photos, I had the opportunity to look again at an image I’ve featured here a short while back, and noticed some small details within the frame. Going in for a closer look didn’t clarify things too much, but I’ll give you a zoomed example to let you try for yourself.
This is, again, a trunk of driftwood on the beach at Jekyll Island, with a crab feasting on a fish head off the edge of the frame. What I’m referring to are those little bits of candy corn that feature prominently in this crop, the tan and brown shiny things adhering mostly to the top surface of the crack in the driftwood. I really don’t know what these are.
For reference, they’re probably about 3-6mm in size. I didn’t get a better look at them because I’d found the crab through idle curiosity with a flashlight, and did not take note of the other features within the crevice. It seems clear that the wood would become fully submerged at high tide, which gives me a clue as to what they might be, but right now it’s just a guess.
If you look at the photo on this post, you’ll see a lot of vaguely similar somethings, only green, little globules of jelly-like substance. Those are all little anemones, often called ‘triffids’ I’m told, and this is what they look like in their retracted, protective state. Allowed to sit submerged and undisturbed for a short period of time, they ‘blossom’ into something like this, or for another view, like this.
If memory serves, I was well up from the low-tide waterline, but again, the presence of the crab and fish head told me that the trunk would submerge at high tide, and possibly retain more than a little water after the tide shifted below it again. But it also seemed evident that the trunk would sit for hours of each day out in the open air, and while the crab could choose to abandon the crevice, any anemones could not, So, can they survive that long without water? Or am I completely mistaken?
Since I’m two states away from this area now, somebody needs to drop down there and take a look for me, preferably as the tide is coming in so they can locate the log first, they see what happens as it becomes flooded. It’s right where the driftwood becomes thickest up on the north beach, about a kilometer east of the fishing pier. Let me know what you find.