Tunicate Tidbits

My younger son and I just read a book about plants that eat animals. So now, we want a Venus flytrap. Funny, but tunicates are often referred to as venus fly traps, like this excerpt from the Monterey Bay Aquarium:

"Predatory tunicates live anchored along the deep sea canyon walls and seafloor, waiting for tiny animals to drift or swim into their cavernous hoods. If you’ve ever seen a Venus flytrap capture an insect, you have a clue as to how a predatory tunicate eats. Its mouthlike hood is quick to close when a small animal drifts inside. Once the tunicate catches a meal, it keeps its trap shut until it’s ready to eat again."

Being the kind of natural gal I am, I hate screens on windows and doors. Let nature in, I say. Which means our house is filled with flies, bees, and moths in the summer months. Unfortunately, those moths get into everything, including our food.

Our plan? To get a few Venus flytraps. But, perhaps now I should get a few tunicates as well.

Here's another thought. Not that I have ever said it before, from now on I think the kids will think it's cool when I say "keep your trap shut." I will be sure not to use it in public

Tunicate

It's not easy finding a name for a blog. After getting multiple rejects, I finally was able to slip Tunicate through. A tunicate is a jelly-like vertebrate that clings to all things underwater. They are filter feeders.

More personally, they are one of the most beautiful creatures I have ever encountered. I am a SCUBA diver - like a fish while diving in warm water, but sometimes, while swimming in the chilly currents off Vancouver, I can encounter mild panic attacks (really, I just need to dive more often). Thankfully, I know what they feel like and know how to stop them. I grab onto the nearest rock, stare at whatever species is in front of me, and breathe slowly, regaining stability. Really, I have had some of the best underwater time this way, up close and personal with microlife, including a few close encounters with tunicates. Their delicately transparent vase-shaped bodies cluster in communal carpets on the ocean floor or rocky reefs. They appear like glass-slippers or little lost sea bottles. Little fragile sea squirts.

Stalashen Reef on the Sunshine Coast has my favourite colony of sea squirts. I float above them absently like a ling cod and watch them sway below me like sea kelp.

I think it is fitting for my blog to be thought of as a cluster of opaqueness. A fragile transparency rooted to the ocean floor. A jellyish thing, swaying in the current, filtering. Something to be inspected close up, something to cling to.