Eunice aphroditois

  eunice colour 
  Originally uploaded by budak.

is a mighty good reason to avoid swimming in the nude as well as the charming name of this polychaete worm, which is commonly found at rocky shores like those by the edge of St. John's island. With the equally evocative common name of Bobbit worm, these oversized sea centipedes (what appears to be legs, however, are chitinous parapodia) wind their through the boulders in search of eatables. With a grown size of 1.5 m (some web sources put it as 3-6 m), this worm has little to fear from hungry ducks, who'd much prefer to stay out of the way of its humongous jaws.

Despite having come across these fowl biters a few times, this was the first photo-opportunity for my duck, as the creatures would typically vanish into the crevices at the first sign of unseemly movement and silently emerge from behind the observer to deliver a fatal embrace. 

  eunice front 
  Originally uploaded by budak.

This time of the year, intertidal outings to the offshore islands are typically in the evenings, which makes for convenient logistics but decidedly inferior pickings compared to the glorious darkness of pre-dawn sessions. My ducky luck also ran out this round when the sky grew grey and released a bittorrent of rain the moment we reached the jetty. Not having packed a raincoat (moral of the day: always bring protection, even if you don't wear it!), I had to cover my dripping duck with a beat-up old poncho groundsheet full of holes and the scent of month-old sweat. But less than an hour into the walk, the clouds crumpled and gave way to an overcast hour of lacklustre lumens. Racing against the dusk, my duck found a snake eel, gangs of black sea cucumbers and a few eunicid worms. More keen-sighted folk spotted naked gill slugs white and yellow. In the fading light of the March tide, the city loomed on the far side of the waters, a misty leviathan of steel and souls lost in a world of their own, for whom these shores are but specks of soil and isles of dreams detached and discarded.

Comments

[Snail]

Some of those polychaetes have such large and powerful jaws that you can hear them click together. (When the worms are in containers and there's no other noise, that is.)