Other inverts found include this apparently quite old, but still very much alive, specimen; who I believe to be a lightning welk. Is that right?
This absolutely gorgeous shell was home to a hermit crab. Any idea what type of snail it is? My oldest daughter got quite a learning experience when she accidently dropped the shell and the crab popped out, the scurried back and put his shell on.
I did manage to turn up two different species of fish. One I believe were small, ~1", mummichogs, Fundulus heteroclitus. They were hanging out in 1/4" deep water trickling out of a muddy tidal pool. They were lightning fast, and buried themselves in the sand when they couldn't out-maneouver my trusty wife and dipnet. I was unable to get a decent picture, but they looked much like a topminnow with ~7 black ovalish lines/spots. Surprisingly,I found no fish in the tidal pool. Gajillions of clear, small shrimp; but no fish. The moving sections of Fish Haul Creek and some of the sand pools also contained large numbers of a fry of some kind. They were kind of shad shaped, transparent, with there bellies outlined in black, with short black dashes on them. No clue what they are, and no picture to show. Still, anybody want to throw out possibilities?
My last new habitat was, well, I don't know. Brackish-retention pond that let out into salt marsh that let out to Fish Haul Creek. the substrate is sucky muck, with lots of leaf litter and some emergent vegetation. Depth is not great, but still approaches 8' in the deeper parts, I'm told. It is home to a couple smallish crocagators. Careful looking (and magnification) will show one in the pond.
It was loaded with gambusia, and the ubiquitous shrimp. I was pleased to catch what I am pretty sure are sailfin mollies, Poecilia latipinna. The only thing is, I didn't catch any large specimens, so no sails. Also, several females had a beautiful orange-yellow spots on their bellies. I haven't ever heard of sailfins having those. But since there are no other mollies in range of which I am aware, and they have the dot-stripes, what else could they be? There was some variety of coloration, and most fish had lost most of their best colors between capture and photographing, but here's a little group of (poor)pics to give you an impression of their appearance. I have never much cared for mollies, but if these are run of the mill sails, I'd gladly set up a tank with some.
I caught several of this topminnow type fish. I have no in-hand brackish water guides, so "topminnow" is as specific as I can get.
Finally, there's this guy. At first blush, it's "shadish", but it has two dorsals. Very fast little guy. Anybody able to field this one?
Sorry to put you through the poor photography, but I was excited to experience so much new stuff, and hope you all enjoyed something a little different, too.
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