From the Archives: Sea Life for Dummies: Experts answer beachgoers' question, 'What is that thing?'

Three days of extremely low tides have exposed shells, sand dollars and even starfish along Dog Beach in Bonita Springs and other beaches in Southwest Florida.  Starfish numbering in the hundreds were stranded on shore at Dog Beach as the tides receded.  While shelling for starfish and other sea life is legal, live shelling is not allowed.    Michel Fortier/Staff
Posted: April 30, 2015
Posted: April 30, 2015 0

Editor’s note: Each week, is bringing back an article from our archives that is still helpful, relevant or insightful. This article was originally published on August 16, 2002.

Maybe you just moved here, so it's all new to you. Or maybe you've lived here forever, so you're too afraid to ask. But take a walk along a Southwest Florida shoreline and you're liable to come across not only the usual readily identifiable fighting conch shells and swooping pelicans, but also a host of sea life you may have seen but haven't the foggiest notion what it is.

It's easy enough to identify a shell collected from the sand by checking with a book or a knowledgeable local. But some items can't be retrieved to serve as a visual aid, and it can be hard to find out what something is from a verbal description (without risking sounding hopelessly ignorant). Having no such qualms about appearing like an idiot, here's some answers from a panel of local experts on questions too potentially embarrassing for the savvy Neapolitan to address. So you can show off your "native intelligence" when visitors arrive, these experts lent their expertise to help answer the question, "What is that thing?"

UCOS -- Unidentified coastal objects

Q. What are those pinkish things that wash up on shore that look like plucked chickens or brains?

A.These are called, unappealingly, sea pork, says Joe Cox, director of the Briggs and Naples Nature Centers of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. "They're very closely related to us," he says, since they have a notochord, or primary backbone. Usually secured to something out at sea, the creatures can become detached in rough waters, such as during a storm, and wash up on the beach. If you're brave enough to pick one up, you'll find it more rigid than it looks, but rubbery in texture.

Q. What are those long, thin, papery white cases seen on shore, often in huge numbers after a storm?

A. According to doctor of marine biology Gary Schmelz, who served as past director of the Big Cypress Nature Center, past educational director of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida and is a member of the Naples Shell Club, these are the tubes of the parchment worm, which lives inside this protective home. Found on sand flats in shallow waters and back bays, the tubes usually lie in a U-shape under the sand so the worm can filter food through the opening at either end. It's common to see the tubes year-round, but after a storm hundreds may wash up on shore.

Q. What are the gelatinous disks that sometimes are found lying on the sand?

A. There are several possibilities, Cox says. Comb jellyfish, which do not sting, are about 2 to 5 inches in size and almost totally transparent. They sometimes wash up on shore. But the gooey-looking blobs may also be the waste sac from worm tubes if they have lots of tiny dots inside, Cox says, or the egg sacs of parchment and acorn worms if they are clearer.

Q. What are the green things that look like pea pods?

A. Mangrove, Doug Suitor of the Collier County Natural Resources Department says. They grow on the red mangrove, fall in the water, then float and wash up on shores so that new trees will grow. In certain areas you will see little seedlings sprouting from them.

Q. What are the things that look like something a snake shed or the vertebrae of an animal?

A. These are, believe it or not, the egg cases of the lightning whelk, a large marine snail indigenous to our waters, Schmelz says. If you pick one up and look closely at it, you'll see the case is made up of dozens of individual cylinders, each of which can contain 20 or 30 developing snails. The egg cases are usually attached to something under water by their stringlike ends, but can get dislodged and washed ashore in rough seas. Schmelz says that if you hold a cylinder against the sun and see the snails, they're probably alive, though throwing the case back probably will not make you a snail hero, as it will likely wash ashore again.

Q. Why, after a storm, does that extra-thick sea foam wash up and just stay there on the sand?

A. Suitor says the long-lasting off-white foam is a result of protein that binds to oxygen bubbles when the water is whipped up by high winds.

On the wing

Most everybody can tell a pelican from a sandpiper. But there's a host of feathered beachgoers that not only look alike, but may vary in coloration and prevalence from season to season.

What's the difference between a cormorant and an anhinga? Both birds look similar, with brownish-black bodies and slender necks, and both spread their wings out to dry after swimming. But out on the gulf, Schmelz says, "99.9 percent of the time, if you see a bird on a piling with its wings stretched, it's a cormorant." Anhinga tend to stay inland, in freshwater habitats. If you're still undecided, check the animal's bill: On an anhinga it's long and pointed, for spearing pray; the cormorant's bill has a sharp hook on the end.

Incidentally, says Ted Below, an ornithologist with the National Audubon Society, the reason the birds hold their wings outstretched is to let the sun and wind dry them, since they have fewer oil glands than other coastal birds, such as pelicans.

If you're not already confused, Below adds that oftentimes a loon, especially when silhouetted by a waning sun, can look much like a double-crested cormorant. Though loons are a checkerboard gray in color, their size and shape are much like that of the cormorant, and they also spend most of their time swimming and diving for prey. If you can't make out the bird's coloring, check its head: Below says that cormorants hold theirs at a 45-degree angle, looking up, while loons keep their bills parallel to the water.

What's the difference between egrets and herons? There are a number of varieties of both in our area, but most commonly you'll see the great blue heron -- easily identifiable by size and color -- and the snowy egret, a smaller white bird with bright yellow "snowshoes," as Schmelz terms its colorful feet. You might also see tricolored and little blue herons -- both recognizable by their coloration -- or a great egret, a larger version of the snowy one, minus the happy feet.

How do you tell a sandpiper from a plover? Ted Below estimates that Southwest Florida is home, at various times of the year, to roughly 20 species of sandpiper, from willets -- the largest -- to sanderlings -- among the smallest. Generally the birds are in shades of gray, white and brown, and have long, thin bills to probe for food. Plovers look similar and also engage in the bionic running sandpipers are known for, but their bills are shorter and usually thicker for plucking up their prey.

What are those things that drop from the air into the water at breakneck speed? Primarily there are two types of birds that dive-bomb the water for prey: the brown pelican --in danger of extinction just a few decades ago, Cox says -- and terns, smaller, lighter-colored birds that can resemble gulls. Terns, however, have longer, sharper bills than gulls and tend to be smaller in size.

Why do flocks of sea birds stand all facing one way? Below gives the seemingly obvious answer: Most birds will face into the wind for easier takeoff, and to avoid ruffling their own feathers.

Other coastal water birds you are likely to see on a beach walk include the majestic frigate bird sailing over the gulf in its signature "flattened W" shape, as Below terms it; skimmers, mostly black with some white under their wings, the lower mandible of which is longer than their upper for scooping up fish; and ospreys flying over the water looking for prey, differentiated from the bald eagle by their smaller size and more black-and-white coloring.

Swimming with the sharks

OK, we all know they're out there, but how afraid should we really be?

"You're probably in more danger of getting hit on I-75 -- or any road in Naples -- and being killed or maimed than you are by a shark," Schmelz says. But he adds that if you take a helicopter ride over the shore on a calm, clear day, you'll be able to pick out the numbers of sharks mingling right among the swimmers. Local varieties include the black-tipped, bonnet-head, nurse and bullsharks.

Of course, dolphins also abound in the waters, as most any local or tourist could tell you. If you see a wayward fin and are worried, Schmelz offers that if it's a dolphin, the pectoral will arch and disappear periodically. A shark, he says, "is just there," its fin, if visible at all, staying steady in the water.

What else are we swimming around with in gulf coast waters? For starters, lots of bait fish, like anchovies and killifish -- which constitutes "a rich soup for sharks," Schmelz adds. Throughout the summer and early fall, stingrays will swim in as far as the very edge of the surf, generally harmless unless stepped on, though Schmelz gleefully tells of an acquaintance who felt that getting stung by a stingray was more painful than the three bullets he took in Vietnam.

There are sand dollars and starfish on the ocean floor, and swimming around your legs might be snapper, snook, pompano, needlefish, yellowtail, electric rays (similar in concept to electric eels), mullet and a host of other fish. Mackerel and jack populations start to balloon by September.

So the next time an out-of-town guest asks you about some of the vagaries of our area's sea life, regale them with your knowledge. No one has to know you had a cheat sheet.

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