10 de septiembre de 2024

Important Notice

Due to a recent boat accident, I mangled my four fingers (not including my thumb) on my right hand. Sadly, they had to be amputated and I may not be posting as often for a month or two while I adjust to using my left hand, and heal.
I'm supposed to be getting prosthetic fingers, hopefully in the not so distant future, and will still check my notifications routinely.
In the meantime I'll try to learn to use a camera with left hand.
My posts may not be as frequent.

Publicado el 10 de septiembre de 2024 por isopodguy isopodguy | 2 comentarios | Deja un comentario

07 de agosto de 2024

Moth trap design

I’ve been looking into how to build moth traps recently and just finished and tested my first prototype. I took an empty pretzel container and cut off the top, then I flipped it upside-down and glued it to the container so it formed a funnel. Then I lined the bottom of the container with pieces of egg cartons, which I read the moths and insects like to land on. Finally, I placed it on my back porch overnight with a light over the top and waited to see what I would catch. I wasn’t sure I would catch anything because it poured rain all through the night, but when I checked the trap in the morning, I found two moths and several caddisflies, which I didn’t think was too bad for a first try.
Publicado el 07 de agosto de 2024 por isopodguy isopodguy | 4 observaciones | 2 comentarios | Deja un comentario

20 de junio de 2024

Lion's Mane Jellies

Lion's mane jellies are some of the most interesting of all jellyfish.
If you know about them, you probably know that they can grow longer than most whales but here are a few other things I thought were interesting.
Lion's mane jellies eat moon jellies. I first learned about this from a nature documentary about cold water life near the top of Russia and got to witness it in real life last year. A large lion's mane had a smaller moon jelly trapped in its tentacles and was slowly eating it.
Lion's mane jellyfish will often let smaller fish live with them. I've often seen a small yellow fish hanging out around much larger lion's manes. I've never identified them but they seem to be some sort of snailfish. I also saw this same kind of fish in a short clip in a video on montereybayaquarium.org though it wasn't named.
Lion's mane jellies can pull in their tentacles. If you seen these jellies do you wonder why some of them have tentacles that stretch out for feet or yards behind them and others have very, very short tentacles. This isn't because some have shorter tentacles. It's actually because the jelly can pull in his tentacles when not feeding.
I hope you found these casual observations to be interesting.

Publicado el 20 de junio de 2024 por isopodguy isopodguy | 1 observación | 0 comentarios | Deja un comentario

19 de junio de 2024

Cod Parasites

It's amazing how some animals can be a whole habitat in which many other species can live.
I've especially observed this in pacific cod. These fish can be host to many different parasites.
On just one average cod I've seen fish lice, many gut worms, and parasitic flatworms. I've also seen large sea going leeches on these fish.
For the parasites, it's probably like staying in a moving hotel with free meals.

Publicado el 19 de junio de 2024 por isopodguy isopodguy | 3 comentarios | Deja un comentario

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