Monterey Bay III: One more step up the evolutionary ladder

Starfish.
I'm not sure how the evolutionary tree goes, but I'll start where I think is the bottom---that has to be starfish. They have this amazing property that if you cut them up, you just get more starfish. I wonder, though, what is the smallest piece of starfish you can have, and grow a new starfish?


Monterey Bay is home to a great many starfish of different colors, it seems. The one above looks pretty happy...I guess.

This starfish was in the octopus tank. In the background, you can see a "Bat Star"---all the other pictures I have of those guys are hopelessly blurry. Check Bryanne's blog, though: she has some non-blurry specimens.

These last ones are brittle stars, which are also a bit blurry. So it goes, I guess.

Crabs.

The crabs were much different to the ones that I am familiar with. I don't know how it works,but I guess the crabs in the Pacific Ocean and the ones that live in the Atlantic Ocean split from each other a pretty long time ago on the evolutionary tree. This probably explains why they looks so different. You can kind of see the "Prince William Sound King Crab" in the background:


This guy looks pretty armored---it's called a California King Crab.



This next one is a "decorator crab". The live mostly in the kelp beds, and harvest bits of seaweed and other invertebrates to decorate their shells with. This helps them camouflage themselves more efficiently. This crab only has some algae growing on it's shell.


Shrimp.

This is a local guy, called a spot prawn. Apparently they're pretty tasty.


This cleaner shrimp is not an indigenous species, however---it was in one of the few tropical tanks in the aquarium. You can see a bit of a moray eel in the background---I have a much more impressive picture of him for later.


Sea Dragons.

This was one of my favorite displays, next to the Jellyfish and the "Outer Bay" tank of pelagic species. None of these sea horses are native to Monterey Bay, either---I think they are native to the South Pacific. Of course, their beauty made up for this fact.

This is a "leafy sea dragon":


It was rather uncooperative, and I think Bryanne may have some better pictures. The animals are incredibly intricate, and were beautiful to watch.


This last one is a bit out of focus, but I'll post it anyway:


Finally, we have the "weedy sea dragon". The colors are pretty remarkable.


Next up: Actual Fish!