Cabbage Head Jellyfish 



Pelican 



Both creatures rely on the sand to 

 protect them and the sea to bring them 

 food. And both are a tasty snack for 

 shorebirds that socialize at the water- 

 line and count on the outgoing waves 

 to remove the sandy camouflage. 



You can watch this high stakes 

 hide-and-seek on any summertime 

 day. These small creatures are perma- 

 nent residents of the swash or inter- 

 tidal zone, which is one of three dis- 

 tinct beach zones that are home to ani- 

 mals specially equipped to live there. 



Equally compelling are the crea- 

 tures that live in the shallows and 

 wave-churned waters of the subtidal 

 zone and the desert-dry strand of the 

 supratidal zone. 



intertidctl 

 zone 



This is the area of beach where 

 you build drip castles with wet sand or 

 sit low in a lounge chair to cool your 



feet in the surf. It's where you feel 

 your toes sink as a wave washes sand 

 from beneath them. 



The constant push and pull of 

 sand is key to the survival of animals 

 that live here. Waves lap at the sand, 

 removing the creatures' protective 

 cover and delivering food; tides reach 

 high and then low again. 



Few but the heartiest animals can 

 live in this zone. 



You can spot the mole crab in its 

 shallow burrow by the V-shaped an- 

 tennae it extends to filter backwash 

 for plankton. Perhaps better known as 

 the sand fiddler, it is not a true crab at 

 all and has no pincers. This egg- 

 shaped crustacean can be identified by 

 gender by the orange patch of eggs a 

 mature female carries on her under- 

 belly in the summer. 



The colorful coquina clam, only 

 1/2 to 3/4 inch long, is one of the 

 smallest mollusks on the beach. It's 



also among the most vivid, with solid, 

 rayed and ringed patterns in white, 

 blue, yellow, red and purple. It digs 

 into the sand with its foot and lifts its 

 siphons into the water. Sometimes 

 colonies as dense as 1,500 clams per 

 square foot color the sands of Carolina 

 beaches. 



Many of us walk past the surf 

 without giving a thought to these ani- 

 mals, but kids will spend hours dig- 

 ging them out of the sand, says Andy 

 Wood, curator of education at the N.C. 

 Aquarium at Fort Fisher. 



"A kid will run up to his parents 

 with a great big mole crab, and if 

 they're not familiar with it, they'll say 

 it's a pretty shell," Wood says. "And 

 then when they flip it over and it 

 moves all those wriggly legs, they start 

 screaming. They tell the kid to put it 

 down or he'll get pinched." 



With a little experience, though, 

 Continued 



COASTWATCH 3 



