By Dave Sigworth, publicist of The Maritime Aquarium

Evolutionary biologists were thrown for a loop recently, all because of one of the most common jellies we have here in Long Island Sound.

At the center of all the fuss are comb jellies, which are like the gelatinous creatures you think of when you think of jellies – for example, moon jellies and lion’s mane jellies. But comb jellies actually not related to those jellies at all. (They’re in a whole different classification phylum. Comb jellies are ctenophores – pronounced TEEN-o-fours. Moon jellies and lion’s manes, and also corals and sea anemones, are cnidarians – pronounced nye-DARE-ee-ans.)

One of the primary things that sets comb jellies apart from other jellies is that they don’t sting. They lack the stinging cells that cnidarians have.

A leidy's comb jelly (Mnemiopsis leidyi). © Fredrik Pjeijel

Comb jellies – a sort of walnut-shaped creature – also move through the water differently. They have eight rows of hair-like structures called cilia, lined from front to back, and these cilia beat rapidly in moving pulses. That motion propels the comb jelly.

Here’s what’s cool about the cilia: they refract light, so the movement of the cilia results in a rainbow of colors flowing across the comb jelly like a movie marque.

It’s easier to see than to explain, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium offers a nice segment: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW3sqB7RTIc

Comb jellies are in the news because researchers doing genome work recently announced that comb jellies may have preceded sponges, which have long been thought to be the first multicellular animal. In other words, comb jellies may bump sponges from the base of the “Tree of Life.”

That’s surprising enough. But what really throws the scientists is that comb jellies are more complex animals than sponges. If sponges came after comb jellies, why didn’t comb jellies pass their molecular features on to sponges? After all, the general rule is that animals don’t evolve to become simpler.

One possibility is that comb jellies may have come first, but they didn’t have the complex systems at first. Instead, they may have evolved their features independently of other early life forms, which would have been quite the trick. Or could it be that sponges indeed simplified over time? (We’re talking some 550 million years ago. Squishy things didn’t leave much of a fossil record.)

Research on comb jellies will continue, with lots of interesting possibilities. The current issue of Science News magazine explains it all: http://tinyurl.com/cj2vcwj

Meanwhile, the crew of The Maritime Aquarium’s research vessel, Oceanic, is bringing up comb jellies on every outing onto Long Island Sound. See them for yourself by coming aboard one of our public study cruises, offered at 1 p.m. Saturdays through June 29.  We’ll go out daily at 1 p.m. in July & August. Get all the details at www.maritimeaquarium.org.

By Dave Sigworth, publicist of The Maritime Aquarium

Now that spring is here, life has returned to our salt marshes. Stand along the edge of a salt marsh and it may seem that the whole muddy shoreline is moving.

The muck seems to be alive, as the blackness quivers, tinged with little waving yellow flecks. Get too close, though, and it suddenly stops.

You don’t need your eyes (or head) examined. You’ve merely come upon a skittish cast of fiddler crabs.

A male fiddler crab.

The Atlantic marsh fiddler crab (Uca pugnax) likes nothing better than a big soggy tract of tidal mud. The crabs dig burrows, which they use for resting, mating, safety and hibernating. They eat the mud too – well, they eat the tiny bits of fungus, algae, microbes and other organisms in the mud. What they don’t digest is deposited back as little mud balls.

Because all their digging helps to aerate the marsh, fiddler crabs are great for the health of Long Island Sound’s salt marshes. And they are a nutritious meal for herons, egrets, raccoons, blue crabs and other marsh predators. (Fishermen also use them as bait, especially when they’re fishing for tautogs, redfish and sheepshead.)

Fiddler crabs generally aren’t much more than an inch or so across, with two long slender eyestalks.

Fiddler crabs, of course, are easily identified by the adult males, which grow one ridiculously large claw – an adaptation that developed to help them attract females. A bigger claw gets the girl. The large claw, called the chela, can be either the male’s left or right.

And why are they called fiddler crabs? When a male feeds, the back-and-forth movement of its small claw (from the ground to its mouth) near its large claw resembles the motion of someone moving a bow across a fiddle.

If you don’t want to go marsh-muckin’ in search of fiddler crabs, you can find them in The Maritime Aquarium’s Salt Marsh gallery.

By Dave Sigworth, publicist of The Maritime Aquarium

A new season has opened for blue crabbing in Connecticut, and a lot of folks who watch the health of Long Island Sound will be closely watching the size of the blue crab “catch.”

Over the last decade or two, the Sound has been warming (like the air and marine waters nearly everywhere). That change may – may – have cost the Sound its lobster industry, because the water temperature gets warmer than lobsters prefer.

But what has been bad for lobsters has been good for blue crabs, which tolerate warmer water.  So researchers closely watch the blue crab population for signs of changes happening in the Sound. Has a shift happened? Has the southernmost range of lobsters indeed moved north? Has the primary range of blue crabs expanded north?

“We think they’re the primary indicator species,” Timothy Visel said of blue crabs.

Visel is the aquaculture program coordinator at the Sound School in New Haven, and he’s among those who closely monitors the numbers of juvenile and adult blue crabs.

A blue crab from Long Island Sound.

So it seems more possible now to have a lot of blue crabs in Long Island Sound each summer.  But there are many factors in play that determine what kind of blue crab year it will be. A lot of it rides on what kind of winter we had.

A mild winter with a normal spring can yield a bounty. In the summer of 2010, it was Blue Crab Heaven out there. Visel estimates there were some 300 million to 400 million crabs for the taking (and boiling and steaming.)

But the numbers fell back last year, and Visel – based on what he’s seen in the central and eastern basins of the Sound – has a disappointing forecast for this summer. Two recent hurricanes – Irene and Sandy – and the coldest winter since 1957 may keep blue crab numbers down.  The forecast in the Chesapeake Bay (historically, the East Coast’s blue crab capital) also are “grim,” he said.

Why? The violently churning water during storms can pull blue crabs out of their hiding places, exposing them to predators and tossing them fatally up onto shore. And a prolonged winter kills crabs by starving them. The crabs, which can store up food energy to cover two to three months, won’t come out of winter hibernation until their water warms to about 48 degrees. If spring comes late, they may die before ever rousing from their winter beds.

But the season just opened May 1, so we’ll just have to see. No blue crabs have been collected yet during the initial 2013 outings of The Maritime Aquarium’s Marine Life Study Cruises, but we’ll be looking for them all summer.  (Join us. Our public cruises depart at 1 p.m. Saturdays through June 29; then at 1 p.m, daily in July & August.)

If you want to test your luck, all you need is a piece of string, a smelly old chicken drumstick, a net and a collection bucket. No license is required and there’s no creel limit, but there is a state size regulation: 5 inches side tip to side tip for hard-shell crabs or 3.5 inches for soft-shell.

And if you are fortunate enough to find blue crabs, be careful because they can pinch somethin’ fierce!

By Dave Sigworth, publicist of The Maritime Aquarium

Sand tiger sharks were in the news the other day. This is the primary species of shark in The Maritime Aquarium’s “The Ocean Beyond the Sound” exhibit (a.k.a., what a lot of visitors refer to as our shark tank). Sand tigers also are the largest of the shark species native to Long Island Sound.

They were in the news not because a sand tiger shark attacked a person. It’s because of how they attack each other even before they’re born.

It’s been known for a while 1) that sand tiger females will develop eggs inseminated by multiple males; and 2) that sand tiger shark embryos will eat each other in utero – in other words, before being born.

A sand tiger shark in The Maritime Aquarium.

What’s new is that scientists have concluded that there may be an evolutionary strategy behind how this happens:  the “winning” baby shark – the shark that actually will survive to be born – usually is the offspring of a male shark that is more aggressive than other adult males.

A news report quoted the lead author of the study – Demian Chapman, a marine biology professor at Stony Brook University – as saying, “This is demonstrating that embryonic cannibalism is actually whittling down the number of males producing offspring.”

For the father of the successful baby shark, he has outcompeted his rivals and it is his lineage that will live on.

Here’s how The Washington Post explained the study:

“Over the course of four years, Chapman and his six colleagues collected 15 pregnant sand tiger sharks that had died after being caught in nets set off Richards Bay, South Africa. By performing genetic tests on the embryos in different states of development, they were able to determine that while the majority of the females had mated with multiple males, in 60 percent of the cases they were carrying only babies from the same father, suggesting that all other male shark offspring had already been killed.”

The question still to be answered is this:  are these “winning” adult males able to mate first with females so that their offspring develop first, giving them an advantage over subsequent sharks fathered by other males? Or do the “winning” males simply produce offspring that develop, or gestate, faster?

Whichever the answer, the result is that all of that feasting on their brothers and sisters has paid off for the newborn sharks:  at birth, sand tiger sharks are nearly 3 feet long and thus much less vulnerable to predators.

(At the Aquarium, we’ve occasionally seen bite marks on the sand tigers that suggest evidence of mating behavior. No pups have been born, and that’s no real surprise. Sand tiger shark births in any aquarium are very very rare.)

By Dave Sigworth, publicist of The Maritime Aquarium

March 31 marked the end of the beaver trapping season in Connecticut. The season for river otters ended March 15.

It may come as a surprise to you that there are enough beavers and river otters (and mink and muskrat and foxes and other “fur-bearing” animals) in Connecticut to have legal trapping.

River otters are “not uncommon,” says Paul Rego, a wildlife biologist for the CT Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP).

Indeed, The Maritime Aquarium displays river otters because there are river otters in Connecticut. (Remember that the Aquarium is all about Long Island Sound and its watershed, and the animals that live in it.)

River otters live in all corners of the state. We know folks who have seen them even in the busiest parts of Norwalk. They’re just not commonly seen because they’re generally nocturnal (active at night) or  – here’s an S.A.T. word for you – crepuscular (active at dawn and dusk).

Statistics for the trapping seasons that just ended weren’t readily available last week. But Rego said the average annual harvest is about 200 river otters and 1,000 beavers. The beaver “take” is greater than of otters because: 1) there are many more beavers than otters in Connecticut, and 2) because beavers are more of a “nuisance animal” and thus a target for removal by trapping. (By law, beavers cannot be relocated.)

Harvest numbers are known because trappers are required to have the pelts tagged by DEEP officials. Trappers must be licensed, and are limited to eight otters per season but have no maximum on beavers.

Beavers were a critical economic driver to the settling of New York City. Still today, the city's official seal includes one eagle, one European colonist, one Lenape native American but two beavers.

States allow hunting and trapping as a means for controlling animal populations and, of course, as a way to make money. And it’s hardly new. Trade in beaver pelts was one of our country’s very first types of commerce. In his book, “Nature Wars,” Jim Sterba writes that the Mayflower Pilgrims shipped more than 2,000 beaver pelts to England in 1630. And trade involving beaver pelts helped to establish New York City. In fact, as Sterba notes, New York City’s official seal, which was created in 1686 but still used today, has one eagle, one European sailor, one Native American and two beavers.

“Americans who think trapping is inhumane and wearing fur is repugnant might be astonished to learn how important a role beavers played in North American history,” Sterba wrote. “The exploration and conquest of the northern United States and Canada were propelled in large part by the economic rewards of finding, catching, killing, eviscerating, and skinning these 50-pound aquatic rodents. …

“Beaver pelts became a currency. Trade in them created an economic network that spanned the Atlantic Ocean from the New World wilderness to the royal courts of Europe and lasted for 300 years.”

After centuries of trapping and of clearing forests for farming, it became harder and harder to find beavers, otters and their like here. But, over the last 100 years, as the number of farms in Connecticut dwindled down, the state has become forested again. And our Woodlands version 2.0 has allowed for the return of woodland animals.

Today, beaver and otter pelts remain just as valued for their dense lush fur. A check on ebay finds river otter pelts available for $180 to $300.  Beaver pelts range from $100 to $250.  Rego of the DEEP said some trappers with export licenses find a market for the pelts in Russia and Asia.

The harvesting of animals on land for food, economic gain and/or wildlife management is our legacy and our reality – no different than how we also have relied over the centuries on the bounty from the sea. The challenge for us, as stewards of Long Island Sound and its watershed, is to see that it is done in smart and sustainable ways.

Some animals, like the striped bass and the bald eagle, were named after distinguishing marks on their bodies.  Others, like Thompson’s gazelles and Fraser’s dolphins, were named for the people who “discovered” them.

A few creatures, however, were named simply to be identifiable by the people who pursued them. Two of the simplest examples are in the flounder family. To fishermen off our Atlantic shores, flatfish commonly caught in the summer became known as summer flounder and those abundant in colder months were named – that’s right – winter flounder.

Both eyes of a winter flounder are on its right side.

Winter flounder spend the summer months in cooler deeper water but come in closer to shore at this time of year to spawn. So now is the legal time to catch them: Connecticut’s winter flounder season opened Monday and continues through May 30.

But there’s more that distinguishes winter and summer flounder than the time of year that they’re within casting range of fishermen.  To explain, we have to start at the beginning of their lives, shortly after a tiny flounder “fry” has hatched. At this early stage of its life, a flounder isn’t a flatfish at all. It looks like a “normal” fish. But as it develops, one eye moves to the other side of its body! The little flounder can then lie flat on the sea floor and keep two sharp eyes out for predators and prey.

As if having a migrating eye isn’t wild enough, the eye that moves is different depending on the flounder species. There are “left-eyed” and “right-eyed” flatfish. With summer and windowpane flounder, the right eye shifts over next to the left eye, so they are “left-eyed.” With winter flounder, it’s the left eye that moves, so they are “right-eyed” (as are most halibut and sole).

How do you tell them apart? Imagine lifting a flounder straight up off the bottom, and trying to tilt it on its side so that its mouth is lower than its eyes. With a winter flounder, you would tip it so the eyes are on its right. Left-eyed summer flounder would get tipped to the left.

Another difference: summer flounder, or fluke, have a wide mouth with big sharp teeth. Winter flounder have a tiny mouth and small (or no) teeth.

Winter flounder (Pleuronectes americanus) are a muddy reddish brown but have hints of olive green and even black. Their underside is white. Within their range from Canada to the Carolinas (including Long Island Sound), they seek out bottoms of soft mud or sand, which they kick up over their bodies to aid in camouflage. Their prey includes worms, small crabs, mollusks and many of the sea’s tiniest swimming creatures.

Winter flounder are tasty enough to make fishing in the cold worthwhile. However, some long-time fishermen will tell you that there aren’t nearly as many winter flounder in Long Island Sound as there used to be. To try to help give the species a chance to rebound, only winter flounder 12 inches or longer can be legally kept in Connecticut. And you can only bring home two keepers per day.

(Summer flounder grow bigger and are more abundant. Their season runs May 15-Oct. 31. They have to be at least 17.5 inches long, but you can keep up to 5 per day.)

We want to mention two items today. One is exciting. One is sad.

The first is to let you know that an expedition is getting under way this week that you’re invited to join remotely.  Back on Nov. 29, The Maritime Aquarium hosted polar explorers John Huston and Toby Thorliefsson, who explained their plans for a March 2013 expedition to a remote island in Canada.

During a November lecture at The Maritime Aquarium, Arctic explorer Toby Thorliefsson talked about polar bears and other dangers in his line of work.

Well, it’s now March 2013 and they’re just about ready to leave. Huston, Thorliefsson and two other fellows are going to hike and mush for 70 days – and 630 miles – across Ellesmere Island, the northernmost landmass of North America and one of the last untouched wildernesses on Earth. They’ll be retracing an expedition route blazed by Otto Sverdrup, a Norwegian who led an Arctic mapping exploration from 1898-1902.

During their presentation at The Maritime Aquarium, they showed lots of cool slides and videos from their past expeditions and their trainings. But what really stuck with us what they eat on their trips: sticks of butter. And fudge. And deep-fried bacon. Just like high-altitude climbers, polar explorers expend a lot of energy. So they need to eat a lot to maintain their endurance – some 7,000 calories a day. But because they also have to carry everything with them, the weight of each item they pack is a huge issue.

For food, Huston said, “You want as much calories with as little weight as possible.”

They’ll be posting a regular blog about their journey. Follow along at www.forwardendeavors.com/blog.

*  *  *

And we are saddened to learn about Monday’s death of Art Glowka of Stamford, who was a fierce advocate for Long Island Sound.

A number of Aquarium staffers knew Art over the years, mainly from conferences and workshops when organizations got together to plan and share for the health of the Sound. Art was an avid fisherman who knew the Sound … and what was wrong with the Sound and what was wrong with some of the best-intended plans to help the Sound.

Every cause needs folks who will doggedly held those accountable … accountable. That was Art Glowka with the Sound. In its Facebook post about Art today, even Save the Sound acknowledged that it had “sometimes been on different sides of an issue” with Art.

But, as one Aquarium co-worker said, “He was usually right.”

We all need to be stewards of Long Island Sound.  The Sound lost a big one Monday.

Here’s a story about Art from today’s Stamford Advocate: www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Longtime-Long-Island-Sound-advocate-dies-4383329.php#src=fb