Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Wet, Windy, Marsh Walk With Dipnet

Here's a shot for those of you into "zonation".

I was on a dipping mission to capture just a few local marsh denizens for my classroom tanks. At this time of year, the marsh creeks are full of spawning killifish of many kinds, native mollies, and some very young, newly spawned baby fish.

This shrimp is full grown though. The grass shrimp that live in the tiniest marsh creeks never get big like their cousins the brown, white, pink, and now, exotic tiger shrimps, that are found in the Gulf.

I caught a nice mix of fish species, shrimps, and crabs for the class. They just stayed for a day and then went back into the Gulf. I will go back for a few more of the baby killifish, when I get another tank set up.
We want to see how fast they grow to bait size.

Flounder think they are ice cream.


After the dipping on one side of State Road 24, I slipped over to the other side and watched birds for a while.


The scaup are bunching up and I assume that means they will soon head north for the summer.


I will miss them.

5 comments:

Caroline said...

He looks more like a "glass" shrimp than anything else.
We can match the wind, but nobody is wadin' in the water yet, it is still mighty cold.

Dani said...

The scaups are so cool looking. We've been seeing a lot of them when we're at Ft. Desoto.

Anonymous said...

The thing I miss the MOST about not living on the coast is seeing all the shorebirds coming and going. What an abundance of beauty they are.

Thunder said...

Pretty cool!

R.Powers said...

Denny says he thinks they went home this weekend.