Since I plan to spend most of the weekend with my legs propped-up while eating milk chocolate bunnies, peanut-butter eggs, and other assorted bon-bons, I thought I'd give my faithful readers a little seasonal fun to keep you occupied. So here's the first, maybe annual Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice and Sunsets Ocean Egg Hunt. The rules are simple: Accurately identify the dozen ocean animal eggs pictured above. And to all you smarty-pants types who would be quick to squash the fun, Yes, I know, some of these are "egg cases" and not the actual eggs. Yeesh, lighten up! It's a game.
The first person to accurately identify all 12 eggs gets a free copy of our fantastic book: Reef. How cool is that?! Precision counts, so try your best to narrow answers down to a species if possible.
Good luck and try not to OD on too much chocolate.
8 comments:
1. Loggerhead Sea Turtle eggs.
2. Knobbed Whelk Egg Case.
3: Horn Shark Egg Case
4. Dungeness Crab
5. Octopus eggs
6. Nudibranch
7. also a nudibranch (different species)
8. sea urchin eggs (Uni)
9. (common market squid) loligo opalescens
10. Mantis Shrimp
11. Capelin
12. Salmon
OK... mantis shrimp was wrong. Now I'm learning what a copepod is :)
here's the corrected list:
1. Loggerhead Sea Turtle eggs.
2. Knobbed Whelk Egg Case.
3: Horn Shark Egg Case
4. Dungeness Crab
5. Octopus eggs
6. Nudibranch
7. also a nudibranch (different species)
8. sea urchin eggs (Uni)
9. (common market squid) loligo opalescens
10. copepod
11. Capelin
12. Salmon
you're quick on the draw, dorid!
you going with that final list?
:)
Yeah. I actually went back and googled the final list and got the same photos you posted. What threw me at first was the copepod. The nudibranch eggs weren't labeled at the sites the photos were on, and because we can't be sure of color and detail I don't think that we could go into any more detail than that, although I have my opinions... I'm not going to risk a shot at the book for them, though ;)
The Capelin wasn't a species easy to identify, especially since I had to sort out the brand names from the actual name of the fish (same with the salmon, which was listed by the brand name and description: Yoshino Salmon Roe)
If you'd like, I could even send you the url for the original photos you used ;)
this one, for example, is the one that hung me up, the Copepod:
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/02arctic/logs/mis_sum_ice/media/aetidaeid.html
Uni (sea urchin) threw me because it was labeled on one site as octopus eggs, and corrected on another site. I went through a few sites to verify it was sea urchin... LOL! I didn't want to take the chance, even though I'd earlier ID'd the octopus eggs.
1 - Loggerhead Sea Turtle eggs (Caretta caretta)
2 - Knobbed Whelk egg case (Busycon carica)
3 - Horn Shark Egg Case (Heterodontus francisci)
4 - Dungeness Crab eggs (Cancer magister)
5 - Octopus Eggs (? sp.)
6 - Spanish Dancer Eggs (hexabranchus sanguineus) always have loved those egg ribbons!
7 - Nudibranch egg ribon (Doriopsilla albopunctata ?)
8 - Uni (Looks delicious!) Sea urchin eggs
9 - (California) Market Squid - Loligo opanlescens
10 - Calanoid Copepod Eggs (Aetideidae sp ?)
11 - Masago (Capelin - Mallotus villosus - roe)
12 - Ikuri (Salmon roe)
And if you find any of #3, be sure to let the Shark Trust know.
regarding #8 - you have to check out this youtube video I found.
looks like i need to bite the bullet and award two prizes:
for the first accurate set of answers, one book goes to dorid...
and for accuracy and precision, eric gets a copy too...
i won't quibble with the answer to #11... i originally selected the image as tobiko (flying fish roe)... but i looked at a few different images later, and those for tobiko and masago look really close...
i actually thought the copepod would be the stumper!
dorid and eric:
shoot me an email (in profile) with your mailing address and i'll pop your prize in the mail...
thanks for playing!
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