SMALL MARINE WONDERS

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Checking in from Poland!

I'm still at home. This year's time off has turned out to be much longer than I originally planned. My truck is still in the service center, which means I don't really have anything to drive at the moment.

So I'm using this time for myself—catching up on overdue tasks, but also allowing myself to simply do nothing. I have to admit that I've become a bit lazy lately, and I've had much less creative inspiration for writing posts on Hive. But I think everyone needs a period like this from time to time.

As for today's post, I actually started writing it quite a while ago but never finished it. Today finally seems like the perfect opportunity to do that. In this post, I'd like to show you some fascinating marine creatures I found on one of the beaches in northern France. I hope you'll find them just as interesting as I did.

The first creatures that caught my attention were MUSSELS. Until then I had mostly associated them with seafood and restaurants, but this was the first time I had the chance to observe them in their natural habitat. Some were covered with seaweed, while others were encrusted with barnacles, showing how many different organisms can live together in such a small space.

What also caught my eye was that they didn't all look the same. Some shells were almost completely black and smooth, while others looked as if they had been shaped by years of life in the sea. I probably would have walked right past them before, but this time I stopped for a while to take a closer look.

These creatures immediately brought back memories from my biology classes in primary school. In Polish they are called UKWIAŁ, while in English they are known as BEADLET ANEMONE (Actinia equina). I remembered their Polish name because it starts with the letter "U" and there aren't many animals in Polish whose names begin with that letter. Whenever we played Countries, Cities at school, I often used UKWIAŁ as my answer when I needed an animal starting with "U". :D
Of course, when I came across them on a beach in France, I had no idea they were BEADLET ANEMONES. Apart from remembering the name, I couldn't recall any of their characteristic features. It wasn't until I got home and started doing some research that I realized this was exactly what they looked like. Suddenly, all those memories from school came back.

What surprised me the most was their appearance. Their surface is smooth, soft and jelly-like, and when touched by the water, they gently wobble almost like jelly. At high tide, BEADLET ANEMONES extend their tentacles to catch tiny prey carried by the current. During low tide, they retract them and turn into these glossy, rounded blobs, which makes them surprisingly difficult to spot among the rocks. Looking at them, it's hard to believe that such a simple-looking creature is actually a predator waiting patiently for its next meal.

I think these were probably the most unusual things I found on that beach. At first, I had absolutely no idea what they were. My first thought was that they looked like some kind of strange, transparent eggs. Only after getting home and doing some research did I discover that these were WHELK EGG CASES.

Female whelks lay hundreds of tiny egg capsules, each containing developing embryos. As they grow, the capsules gradually become empty, and storms or strong tides often wash them ashore, where they collect in large clusters like the ones I photographed.

What fascinated me most was their structure. They almost look like tiny translucent balloons or delicate flower petals. Up close, you can even see a network of fine veins running across each capsule, making them look surprisingly intricate. If I hadn't looked them up later, I probably would have walked away convinced they belonged to a completely different animal.

At first I honestly thought it was just some strange shell. It was so different from everything else lying on the beach that I had no idea what I was looking at. Naturally, once I got home, I started searching for an answer.
It turned out to be the CUTTLEBONE of a CUTTLEFISH. I have to admit, that was quite a surprise. I had seen cuttlebones before in pet stores because they're often sold for birds, but I never knew they actually came from cuttlefish.

The cuttlebone is the internal shell of the animal. It's incredibly light and full of tiny air-filled chambers that help the cuttlefish control its buoyancy. Thanks to that, it can move up and down in the water almost effortlessly.

What surprised me the most was its size. I definitely wasn't expecting it to be this big. And when I picked it up, it felt almost weightless. It's funny how many things you can walk past without a second thought until one day curiosity gets the better of you.