39 articles
Henricia leviuscula, the scarlet blood star of Pacific reefs — smooth-skinned, patient, and able to catch plankton with its stomach. A complete species profile.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Cape Arago's sandstone reefs hold Oregon's best tidepools, a sea lion haulout, and bull kelp gardens shaped by wild storms. A coastal atlas guide.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Apostichopus californicus, the biggest sea cucumber on the Pacific coast, recycles kelp forest sediment from Alaska to California. Biology, defences, fishery.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The graceful kelp crab is the smaller, rougher, more widely wandering sibling of the northern kelp crab — as at home in eelgrass as on a kelp frond.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Meet the grass rockfish (Sebastes rastrelliger): a shallow-water ambush predator that barely leaves home — and pays for that loyalty when the pressure comes.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Beyond the species profile: how the gumboot chiton's iron-toothed grazing shapes crustose coralline algae, kelp recruitment and the wave-washed reef.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The hairy shore crab is the Pacific coast's estuary specialist — bristle-legged, slow-footed and more comfortable in brackish water than its purple cousin.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Oregon's bull kelp rides one of the wildest upwelling coasts on Earth — and its southern forests are on the edge. A guide to the reefs and the fight back.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Kelp greenling are the kelp forest's most colourful small residents — blue-speckled, sex-changing-looking, nest-guarding. Biology, fishery and where to see them.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The leather star (Dermasterias imbricata) is a smooth, slippery, garlic-scented sea star that hunts anemones and sea cucumbers — biology, range and how to find it.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Pacific lamprey (Entosphenus tridentatus) is a 450-million-year-old jawless fish that spends years as a filter-feeding larva, hunts the ocean, then returns home.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Profile of the Pacific sand lance: a pencil-thin forage fish that buries itself in sand beside the kelp forest and feeds seabirds, salmon and whales. Facts and ecology.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
How to identify a Pacific spiny lumpsucker: field marks, lookalikes, the suction disc, and where to actually find this walnut-sized kelp bed fish.
Tom Okafor ·
Banded like a convict, tusked in miniature, and perched on the rock: how to find and identify the painted greenling of North Pacific kelp beds.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Meet the giant pink sea star — a two-foot, sand-plowing predator of clams and sand dollars that patrols the soft floors between Pacific kelp forests.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The purple shore crab is the little purple scavenger under nearly every rock on Pacific rocky shores — a key cleaner linking the kelp forest to the tide line.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The quillback rockfish is a long-lived, deep-bodied resident of Pacific kelp reefs — orange-freckled, fiercely site-loyal and one of the slowest fish to grow old.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Red Irish lords are mottled, spiny, glued-to-the-rock sculpins that vanish against red algae and barnacles — a masterclass in benthic camouflage.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Long brown streamers on the surf-struck low shore: how to identify ribbon kelp, follow its fierce seasonal cycle, and place it among its edible kin.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The Pacific spiny lumpsucker is a walnut-sized armoured fish that clamps to kelp and eelgrass with a suction-disc belly. Biology, range, where to look.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Meet the striped seaperch, a live-bearing surfperch of Pacific kelp beds — and a close look at how viviparity works in a fish that births on the reef.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Meet the striped surfperch (Embiotoca lateralis), the copper-striped, blue-flecked surfperch of rocky shores and kelp beds from Alaska to Baja California.
Tom Okafor ·
The gumboot chiton is the world's largest chiton — a hand-long, magnetite-toothed grazer nicknamed the wandering meatloaf. Meet the kelp coast's gentle giant.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Kelp crabs graze the very forest they live in. How Pugettia producta clips, prunes and cleans kelp fronds — and why predators keep the shears in check.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
No towns, no coast highway, 135 wild miles of rock and bull kelp under the Olympic mountains — the most intact temperate marine wilderness left in the lower 48.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Tochuina tetraquetra, the orange-peel nudibranch, is one of the world's largest sea slugs — a cold-water giant that hunts sea pens and smells faintly of watermelon.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Cook Inlet is Alaska's great tidal estuary — bore tides, glacial silt, belugas and salmon, with rich cold-water kelp beds in its clear pockets. A Coastal Atlas guide.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
The marbled murrelet feeds in kelp-fringed seas and nests miles inland on old-growth limbs. The ecology of a seabird split between two vanishing worlds.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Five-ribbed kelp (Costaria costata) is the wide, ripple-edged kelp of northeast Pacific reefs — biology, kitchen uses and how it differs from wakame.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The northern kelp crab is a colour-changing spider crab that lives its whole life in the kelp canopy. Learn its biology, diet, and role in the forest.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Profile of the buffalo sculpin — its jutting preopercular spines, reported venom, bright guarded egg masses and life in northeast Pacific kelp beds.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The starry flounder is the North Pacific's most river-loving flatfish, banded in orange and black. How to identify it, where it hunts, and why estuaries need it.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Meet the tubesnout, the matchstick-slim schooler of Pacific kelp canopies — a stickleback relative that nests on kelp and feeds half the birds.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Bull kelp (Nereocystis) is the Pacific Northwest's iconic annual kelp — and a famously fussy farm crop. Here's the biology, the progress, and what trial growers should expect.
Naomi Reyes ·
Meet the bay pipefish, the Pacific coast's eelgrass mimic — a seahorse relative that hunts like a drifting grass blade from Alaska to Baja.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Meet the high cockscomb, a crested prickleback living under rocks from Alaska to California — an intertidal survivor with a breeding male's comb.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The scalyhead sculpin is a tassel-headed, fully scaled cottid of Pacific kelp beds — a small ambush hunter whose males turn crimson over guarded egg masses.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Meet the kelp greenling, a shy Pacific reef fish of extraordinary colours — and learn why males turn midnight-dark to guard their egg clutches for weeks.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
A species profile of the yellowtail rockfish — the wide-ranging midwater schooler of Pacific rocky reefs, its life history, fishery, and how to tell it from its cousins.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·