On 4 Jul 00, Lydia Gaebe wrote:

> Spent the 4th down on Puget Sound and I spied something strange.
> Little "geysers" of water squirted up from the sand! I also found
> strange sand bowls....Rubbery sand structures that look like bowls of
> some kind. What sort of sea creature squirts water into the behinds
> of unsuspecting beachcombers? What builds the rubbery, sandy bowls?

The "little geysers" are most likely clams squirting.

The rubbery bowls are Moon Snail (Polinices lewisii) egg masses,
pretty common this time of year wherever Moon Snails hang out. They
move into deep water during the winter, but move back to shore in the
spring. The egg mass is a sandwich of the eggs between layers of sand
held together with mucous. They'll hatch in a month or two.

Doug

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Douglas Canning
Olympia, Washington
dcanning at igc.org
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