The Case of the Missing Metridium

[ScubaBumps]

On Saturday, I was out at Metridium Fields with some friends at a section I have been to before. Rather than rocks covered with Metridium, we found a couple dozen Metridium in small clusters. On the tops of the rocks were bare patches with clean rock surfaces where nothing was growing. It looked to us as if the Metridium had been removed recently.

Has anyone made the same observation? Does anyone know about this mystery?

Steve

 

[np251]

Hmm, strange. Me and KLJ were out there yesterday and they were out in all their glory. Could barely see the rocks there were so many metridia. Weird. We hung out at the main rock though, didnt look at the smaller outlying rocks.

I kinda goofed on the return back to the pipe- which was kinda cool since we saw some other neat stuff- like a huge fish eating anemone sitting out by itself. At least as big as the cormorant that swam right over the top of it.

 

[Anti-Hero]

Sounds like you missed the main patches and ended up on another less populated patch.

 

[ScubaBumps]

It's possible that we missed the better fields in the murk on Saturday. What led us to suspect they had been removed were the patches of clean rock surface where Metridium would normally be. With all the stuff floating around in the water, the rocks should have had a coating of some type of organism. These patches were scraped clean, or until recently, covered by Metridia.