My quest to scan all of my 35mm color slides continues. It is a lot of work and I will not be finished anytime soon. What I find fascinating is discovering images that I have that I didn’t really know existed. It was very evident while I was scanning lion’s mane jellyfish, Cyanea capillata. This is the image that made me stop and pause:
This is the photo of the bell of a lion’s mane jellyfish. There are two hitchhikers aboard the jellyfish. There is a Chaetognatha (below), Spadella cephaloptera, which is also known as an arrow worm. Arrow worms are transparent or translucent dart-shaped animals covered by a cuticle. They are predatory marine worms that are a major component of plankton worldwide.
The chaetognatha was cool but it wasn’t what I was excited about. In the upper left hand corner is a tiny, baby long-finned squid, Loligo pealei.
I have never seen a squid in New Jersey. I have seen their eggs but that is it. I am estimating that the squid was 1/4” to 1/2” long. I have a few other shots of the same jellyfish but from different angles. It is more difficult to see that it is a squid in the other photos but since they were taken one-after-the-other of the same jellyfish, I assumed that what I have is a view of the squid with its tentacles tucked underneath its body.
Now that I know what a baby squid looks like, I have found it on another photo. I missed it on the first scan because of the way that the scanner exposed the image. It blew out all the white areas. I rescanned using manual settings (this will be the subject of an upcoming blog) and lo and behold-there was another juvenile squid.
This is an eight-ribbed hydromedusa. It is the only photo that I have of one and our little hitchhiker is aboard.
So this was just one of the exciting things that I am experiencing as I continue on my quest. I will be bringing more to this site as I find them.
© 2012, Herb Segars. All rights reserved.
