When looking at this rock, what are your first thoughts? Any life here? Although the sand may look grey and dreary with a few spots of green microalgae here and there - your first impression may be that there is no life in this Pacific tidepool.
Meet the common California Mussel. I'm sure you've met before already, but there's much more life than clem-clam's shell and his inside here.
A mussel is born as a tiny plankton. The plankton has to find a place to attach to which is usually a rock. From there on, it uses it's string like glue byssus to glue itself to the rock. Mussels can live for a hundred years - giving enough time for a whole ecosystem to develop on the shell of one mussel.
Barnacles, which are crustaceans trapped in a calcium shell are one of the first animals to glue itself to the shell.
Barnacles use a feather-like appendage called cirri to collect photo plankton in the water.
Later on, anemone larva that is floating finds a nice home on the mussel. As food passes by during high tide, the anemones latch on to it and feed while stuck to the mussel.
By the time the mussel is 5, fish, crabs and limpets stop by to graze on the algae that has developed on the shell, or find shelter from a bigger animal.
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