So we're here at Constellation Beach in West Seattle,
looking for moon snails.
These snails like a nice sandy beach because they dig down
under the sand to look
for their favorite food, which is clams.
So a moon snail itself is actually quite hard to find,
but there are lots of
signs of moon snails now
you can find around on the beaches.
So here's one clamshell
that has been preyed on by a moon snail.
The moon snail drills
down into the clamshell, and it basically sucks out
the clam over a number of hours.
Here's a good pile of the egg collars
that the moon snails make.
As they sit, they start to disintegrate
and that's what they're supposed to do.
And as it disintegrates,
the eggs are released out into the water and hopefully
to create new little moon snails.
They try to go down when the water goes out.
So we'll have better luck finding them down...down lower.
(gentle water sound)
Here's one!
So I think what
we have here is a moon snail actually laying eggs.
So most of it's under...under the sand.
But this little bit, it's attached.
It is so cool.
It was moving.
You can see it moving.
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So this...very incredibly
found a moon snail actually laying eggs.
This is the moon snail's body; this is its foot
and it's like a silky texture.
So apparently...I've never seen them actually lay eggs.
Apparently when they
are laying eggs, they kind of flip up
because we obviously saw the foot.
And then when it was done, it started to rotate
and the shell was back on the top again.
Now that it's all done, it's starting
righted itself and now it's starting
to dig back down into the sand again.
In Seattle, we're just
ridiculously lucky
because we have so many different habitats,
from forests to wetlands to the beach.
We can have
a sighting of an orca one day, we can have octopus,
we can have nudibranchs.
There's just so much to discover and
it's just so much fun. (laughs)
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