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Working on fishy facts on stream again:

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  • Watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkFmTq13NOQ (May 8, 2020)
    • Sheepshead minnow:
      • Sheepshead minnow is used to shallow water and is on exhibit in the touch tank at the Virginia Living Museum. They are also very adaptive and can survive in a large varieties of salinity and temperature. Male fish display glittery blue, sometimes orange, coloration on their forehead and fins during breeding season.
    • Horseshoe crabs:
      • Horseshoe crabs are often found buried in the sand. They prefer saltwater and brackish water. They can tolerate freshwater, but it's not typical. You can also find them in marshes. During the wintertime, they will go deeper into the ocean when it is warmer and return to the shore in the springtime to spawn.
      • As long as their gills are damp, they can survive on land. They could stay out of water for maybe an hour or so depending on the weather.
      • Horseshoe crabs are not actually crabs; they are invertebrates. They, like many other invertebrates, need to shed their exoskeleton. When they molt, they usually become 30% bigger. They are more closely related to arachnids than crabs.
        Horseshoe crabs have two compound eyes and seven photoreceptors. all over their body, including their tail.
      • No one knows how long Horseshoe crabs can live for -- some have lived for 20 and 40 years.
      • Horseshoe crabs can't really pinch with their claws -- they are soft and mostly used to pick up things. Males have big boxing-glove-like front claws which are used to hold onto the shell of the female that they are mating with.
      • Horseshoe crabs will spawn near the shore, where they release their eggs and sperm into the water, and the babies grow up on their own.
      • They eat mollusks, worms, small crustaceans, bits of fish and squid, and detritus. They will eat any dead material they can find.
      • In captivity, they are normally fed something called "gel" which contains things like algae and fish protein.
      • The spiky tail is known as a telson, but it's not dangerous at all. It's not sharp at the end either. It's used as a tool to flip over if they get stuck and as a rudder to move around. It only hurts if you happen to step on it.
      • Caught as bait by fisherman and sometimes eaten, but are mostly caught these days for a compound called LAL, a type of lysine, which can be used to detect toxins and fungi. Harvesting the blood is done with a needle, and most will survive this operation. They even use LAL on the International Space Station. A synthetic version is being worked on.
      • Humans are the main predators of hermit crabs. Most other animals don't bother eating them.
    • Spider crabs:
      • Relative of the Japanese King Crab, also known as decorator crabs because they pick algae, rubs it on their legs and spit on it, then attaches the algae to their shell (the spit acts as a kind of glue). They do this for camouflage.
      • The females have a round "apron" on their underside where they carry their eggs.
      • They can pinch and it can hurt. They are not poisonous. They will only pinch you if you try to pick them up, but it's not terribly dangerous.
    • Striped Hermit crab:
      • Striped legs
      • In the wild, they would hide inside the shell when being picked up.
    • Flatclaw Hermit Crab:
      • Big, chunky flat claws.
    • Lightning Whelk:
      • Opens on the left side when viewed from below, with the spiral of the shell pointing upwards. Those that open on the right are knobbed whelks.
      • When they get big enough, they change gender from male to female.
      • They lay lots of eggs in their egg cases.
    • Middleneck clams:
      • Have a small black thing sticking out called a siphon which they use to breathe, by pulling in water to their gills, and also to filter feed.
  • According to the Marine Laboratory and Aquarium the striped hermit crab's scientific name is Clibanarius vittatus. It is an invertebrate. They are named for the distinctive brown and white striping on their legs. They are opportunistic feeders and will eat whatever is available, including sea grasses, plants, dead animals, and other organic matter. Within the Atlantic Ocean, they are found in bays, mangroves, beaches, mud flats, and other coastal habitats.
  • Indian River Lagoon Species Inventory for Clibanarius vittatus
    • Because it can withstand desiccation better than many other hermit crabs, C. vittatus is usually the species found on exposed tidal flats and beaches at low tide (Ruppert & Fox 1988).
  • The lightning whelk is the state shell of Texas https://tpwd.texas.gov/fishing/sea-center-texas/aquariums-exhibits/touch-tank
  • As for starfish and sea urchins in touch tanks, I found the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma Park, WA which lists the sea star species in their touch tank exhibit:
    • Blood stars (Henricia leviuscula) are reddish-orange and have four to six long, skinny arms which can grow up to 10 inches in diameter. They feed on bacteria and other tiny particles, and live in protected crevices and pools from the tidal zone down to 2,200 feet between Alaska and Baja California.
    • Ochre stars (Pisaster ochraceus) are found from Alaska to California and lives among rocks in tidal areas. They have all sorts of colorations, including yellow, orange, brown, red or purple. Most have five arms but some have four or seven. They can regenerate their arms, like most other sea stars. Also like most other sea stars, they eat by pushing their stomach out of their body and into the shells of their prey. They eat mussels, barnacles, snails, limpets and chitons. Sea otters and sea gulls are their main predators.
    • Purple sea urchins (Strongyloncentrotus purpuratus) have pincers, tube feet, and purple spines. They can use their teeth and spines to dig holes in stones and steel pilings for a place to hide. Sea otters, sunflowers stars and California sheephead all prey on sea urchins. Without enough predation, purple sea urchins can eat up an entire kelp forest.
  • Puget Sound Museum of Natural History has more information about the Ochre Sea Star:
    • Most are either orange (ochre) or purple, but there is no hypothesis yet that explains the variety of coloration.
    • Ochre Sea Stars are the most commonly seen sea star in Pacific Northwest coastal areas.
    • They are considered a keystone species for the intertidal ecosystem. They are voracious predators that feed on smaller animals like mussels. By killing so many mussels, sometimes even wiping them out completely from stretches of coastline, they make stretches of coastline available for other species that would otherwise normally be dominated by mussels.
    • A large female ochre sea star can produce 40 million tiny eggs.
  • https://montereybayfisheriestrust.org/stories/zombie-urchins
    • "The crisis is a massive population of purple sea urchins blanketing huge swaths of near-shore ocean floor. It’s a problem because they eat giant kelp from the roots up, destroying the underwater forests that are essential habitat for fish, invertebrates and marine mammals."
    • "After they’ve consumed all there is to eat, the urchins survive despite braving starvation, in a hibernation-type state, creeping around the ocean floor like the undead, forming spooky and spiky fields of purple called “barrens.” Commercial scuba diver Grant Downie, who’s been harvesting urchins professionally for more than a decade, is familiar with the hollow reality. “There’s no uni inside, no nutritional value,” he says. “It’s just a living, empty shell.”"
    • "The Blob is how scientists described a years-long marine heat wave that diminished oceanic nutrients kelp depends on, while also suffocating the towering plants with its warmth. Around the same time, the mysterious wasting disease started turning sea stars, which are prime sea urchin predators, into mush."
    • "A group of volunteer recreational divers launched the Giant Giant Kelp Restoration Project in 2018 and systematically smashed urchins with hammers. Thanks to their efforts culling hundreds of thousands of the sea hedgehogs, an entire 11- acre area of giant kelp off Monterey’s Del Monte Beach recovered."
    • "But the California Department of Fish and Wildlife didn’t renew its permit to cull urchins, in part because officials weren’t in love with the idea of killing a native and noninvasive species."
  • https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/31/california-pacific-kelp-forest
    • "Led by the Bay Foundation, divers in the Santa Monica Bay have spent 15,575 hours underwater over the past 13 years. To bring the kelp back, they focus on minimizing the impact of one voracious eater: the purple urchin. The effort has been successful, smashing 5.8 million purple urchins and clearing 80.7 acres (32.7 hectares, the size of 61 football fields), and allowing the kelp to return."
    • "But the real benefit is seeing how quickly the kelp returns when the urchins are under control – in some cases within a matter of months. That’s because the microscopic single-celled kelp spores are wafting in the water column all the time – much like seeds of a plant carried by the wind – waiting for the right conditions to attach to the reef and start growing."
  • https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rise-sea-urchin-180951859/?all
    • In the brave new world of fine dining, the roe of the humble urchin—a shellfish once cursed as a pest to lobstermen, mocked as “whore’s eggs” and routinely smashed with hammers or tossed overboard as unsalable “bycatch”—is a prized and slurpily lascivious delicacy. Unlike caviar, which is the eggs of fish, the roe of the urchin is its wobbly gonads. Every year more than 100,000 tons of them slide down discerning throats, mainly in France and Japan, where the chunks of salty, grainy custard are known as uni and believed to be an uplifting tonic, if not an aphrodisiac. The Japanese exchange urchins as gifts during New Year celebrations.

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