Posted on by Willem

Sunday/ a bed of sand dollars

There was a whole bed of black sand dollars on the beach late Sunday afternoon.

Sand dollars in the shallow water, using the incoming tide to catch food particles with their fuzzy spines. Tiny hairs (cilia) ferry the food particles along their bodies to a central mouth on their bottom side.
Sand dollars are flat sea urchins called echinoids.  Dead ones lose their spines and the skeleton becomes white, bleached by the sun.
This is the meadow by Shorewoods Beach. It is on the northern tip of the Kitsap Peninsula. There was an osprey in the treetop on the left (too small to see in the picture, though).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *