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Wildwood Vacation 2016


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#1 loopsnj64

loopsnj64
  • NANFA Guest

Posted 03 July 2016 - 08:00 PM

Every year my parents, brother and I go to Wildwood, NJ for summer vacation, I focus a LOT on shell-collecting on the beaches, and looking at all the local life

This year, much to my excitement (and my brothers chagrin), we got to go to the Wetlands Institute, and take a nice good look at all the flora & fauna of the marshes

Every time we went to the beach, I was almost constantly collecting shells, I don't have any pictures, but I found the following beach treasures
-Common Surf Clam
-Coquina clams
-Razor clam
-Ribbed mussel
-Blue mussel
-Blood ark clam
-Whelks (mostly fragments, any intact Whelk shells had living whelks in them and thus were left alone... aside from some pictures)
-Whelk egg cases (Were abundant one day among a massive pile of beached algae, nonexistent any other day)
-Skate egg cases
-Moon snail (had a number of barnacles and slipper shells attached to it)
-various smaller snails
-Slipper shells (either on their own or attached to other things.... or even eachother)
-Crab shed shells
-Horseshoe crab molts
-Beached Horseshoe crabs
-head-carapace of a spider crab

now  for the pictures

Here is the aforementioned Whelk


Unfortunately, it seems a large number of crabs had beached this year


View of the Salt Marsh in all its salty glory!


In the marsh, I was mesmerized by the Terrapins, Birds, Fiddler Crabs, and Plant Life






This Terrapin was seen digging a nest (The Wetlands Institute was littered with marked Terrapin nests, with cages placed on top to deter raccoons and fish crows)


The Turtles in these pictures are the ones the Institute keeps for display and educational purposes




Later, at the beach there was a massive raft of algae that washed ashore (30+ feet wide!) tangled in it was this common pipefish, as much as I wanted to fill my bucket and convince dad to drive us to release it to the marsh it belongs in... unfortunately we had too busy a schedule to allow for that, and so I released it, knowing full well something like that could never survive the battering of the waves... at least I found a lot of shells in the algae raft
pipefish.jpg

Along the dunes were the gorgeous little Beach Morning Glories
Beach morning glory.jpg

...and last but not least, the sunset
THE SUS SET.jpg

...the only things I brought home were seashells, and the above pictures
...and some boardwalk souvenirs
 

Attached Images

  • birb2.jpg
  • birb1.jpg
  • beachedcrab1.jpg
  • boxturtle.jpg
  • Fiddler.jpg
  • markedturtle.jpg
  • nestturtle.jpg
  • pricklypear.jpg
  • Stroketurtle.jpg
  • Terrapins.jpg
  • themarsh.jpg
  • whelk.jpg

Edited by loopsnj64, 03 July 2016 - 08:04 PM.

"All good things must come to an end, but bad things think thats rather dull, so they stick around long after their natural end has come"

-From an art book I read


#2 loopsnj64

loopsnj64
  • NANFA Guest

Posted 03 July 2016 - 08:05 PM

Sorry about the misplaced images being away from their descriptions


"All good things must come to an end, but bad things think thats rather dull, so they stick around long after their natural end has come"

-From an art book I read




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