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Storms Dump Wild Stuff, Rarities on Oregon Beaches |
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Covering 180 miles of Oregon coast travel: Astoria, Seaside, Cannon Beach, Manzanita, Nehalem, Wheeler, Rockaway, Garibaldi, Tillamook, Oceanside, Pacific City, Lincoln City, Depoe Bay, Newport, Waldport, Yachats & Florence.
10/23/07
Secrets of the Season |
Storms Dump Wild Stuff, Rarities on Oregon Beaches
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| Shark found on N. coast (photo Tiffany Boothe, Seaside Aquarium) |
(Oregon Coast) – The storms of last week caused a flood of crazy stuff to wash up on Oregon coast beaches, making for exceptional beachcombing all weekend and this week. Everything from large predators like sharks to the tiniest, unusual jellyfish have been found, along with some interesting agates of rather large size. Add to that the glorious weather expected all week long and beachcombers have a wild and weird paradise on Oregon’s coast for the next few days.
On the north coast, Seaside Aquarium staff found a deceased harbor porpoise, a salmon shark and a somewhat rare dolphin, along with various kinds of jellyfish of varying degrees of oddness.
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In Newport, people have made some strange discoveries with the jellyfish they found on the beaches there, including some that were still alive and some that still have yet to be identified.
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| Common dolphin (photo Boothe) |
Meanwhile, all this bodes well for hunters of agates, as some big finds are expected after this run of large waves.
Tiffany Boothe, with the Seaside Aquarium, said the rare find they made was a long-beaked common dolphin – a species whose natural habitat is the Oregon coast shoreline. But what makes it rare is that aquarium staff have never seen one wash up before.
“We’ve never seen one before, in spite of the fact they are regulars around here,” Boothe said.
The common dolphin was five and a half feet long. There are also short beaked versions of this species.
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| Porpoise found by Seaside Aquarium |
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The harbor porpoise was two and a half feet long, and the salmon shark – often mistaken for great whites – was three and a half feet long. Great whites are larger by a foot or more in length.
Someone also reported to the aquarium seeing a mola mola (or Ocean Sun Fish), which are quite rare to find on the north coast.
All were freshly dead, Boothe said. “It depends what is floating out there,” she said. “These storms had a lot of west winds, which always blow in whatever is floating out there.”
In Newport, naturalist Terry Morse discovered a host of interesting jellyfish while beachcombing over the weekend, as well as some interesting orange goo that has so far gone unidentified.
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| Polyorchis-like jelly w/ smaller yellow-tentacled jelly swimming beside it (photo Terry Morse) |
Morse was just cruising the Nye Beach area on Friday after the week’s storm waves smacked the beaches, and found some orange goo – about four millimeters wide - he didn’t recognize.
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Morse came back Saturday to pick some up for examination, but it was gone, though he did make a few more startling finds on Sunday when he walked the southern beaches of Newport, near the bay mouth.
While that goo is still somewhat debated by coastal experts, it seems to be a colonial ascidian – a type of jellyfish.
“I got my Sunday jellies home, I put them in a large Petri dish filled with fresh sea water to examine them under a microscope,” Morse said. “To my surprise, several of them revived and started swimming, so I transferred them to a larger observation tank full of sea water and photographed them.”
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| Orange goo found by Morse (photo Morse) |
These freaky creatures, which look like the brainchild of a designer of science fiction movie monsters, included things known as the Red Eyed Medusa, or Penicillate jelly.
“This smaller jelly with red ocelli (eyespots), thick yellow tentacles, and the distinctive innards was the most interesting discovery of the day,” Morse said. “The photo shows it swimming beside the larger Polyorchis-like jelly with thick tentacles. If you look closely, you can make out slender yellow tentacles as well.”
Kay Myers at FACETS Gem & Mineral Gallery in Newport is predicting prime agate hunting after these storms. She points to one example found in August by Lincoln County resident Ray Morrow. It was a monster 6"x3" blue agate weighing 2.2 pounds, found just north of Newport.
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| Unknown creature found by Boothe |
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| Red Medusa found this week on central and north coast (photo Boothe) |
“After the storms we have experienced here at the coast with the high seas, more agate beds should become exposed soon,” Myers said.
It’s just another delightful possibility beachcombers have to look forward to soon, if not already.
Back up in Seaside, Boothe took a walk on Tuesday and discovered still more oddities lying around the beach. She found dozens of shrimp molts, various kinds of jellyfish, and something she could not identify.
It is very small, maybe only one to two mm,” she said. “It moves around like a worm and is translucent, but has some light orange coloring inside.”
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| Bubble-like jelly (photo Boothe) | Shrimp molt (photo Boothe) |
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