Echinoblog Travelog! Pt. 4 Stories from Tsukuba & Japan!

Travel is about experiences. Here are some of mine.... Starfish and not....

1. Starfish Story! 

Found this cool disk from the starfish Plazaster borealis the other day.  I am somewhat obsessed with this starfish (see this blog). It goes by the common name "tako hitode" aka the "octopus starfish" and we know next to nothing about it.  Sadly, this specimen was found without arms. Probably something that happened when it was collected....

Cool thing about this and the specimen lot it was found in?? Collected in 1932.  This species of starfish was originally described in 1938. That means, this specimen was actually collected SIX years before the species was actually described by Dr. Tohru Uchida.

 Here's what the animal looks like in its natural state. Almost 40 arms! But they disarticulate pretty easily.

2. Starfish-Worm Story!

The other day, I encountered this: polynoid polychaete worms which live commensally on the starfish Solaster borealis! STILL attached and living to their "host".

The bond between worm and host can be quite strong and is possibly a "two-way" relationship as I wrote about in Dermasterias imbricata, awhile ago here. 

                                        

To give you some perspective, here is what the animal looks like in situ (from the North American side of the Pacific). 

This image from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute! 

And here is a close up of the worms living inside the mouth and tube foot grooves of the starfish...

With this Japanese Solaster borealis, we are seeing the relationship among some relatively deep-sea species but this type of relationship is also seen on several North American species of Solaster, such as this one from a shallow-water Washington species.

Where better to live/feed than on the "top dog" starfish predator like Solaster?  (or any starfish for that matter!)

3. Tunicate Food Story!
Travelling to foreign lands and new places means trying new foods and dishes that you don't normally get to try when you are at home. Sometimes, these dishes can be quite exotic.

Case in point: after a presentation at the University of Tokyo, I was treated to some hospitality including the opportunity to try hoya aka raw sea squirt or tunicate! 

I wrote a post about exotic invertebrates eaten around the world here. Here is a picture of what hoya looks like alive.

What does it taste like? Hm. An acquired taste certainly. Kind of sour and medicine-like is probably the most polite way to put it... Not one of my favorites but glad that I tried it!

4. Bathroom Story!

This one is a simple lesson in keeping track of different kinds of plumbing! Behold my bathrooom set up!

The shower is nozzle connected to the sink faucet. Very efficient. There's a shunt switch that routes water either to the faucet OR to the shower head. The shower head is used in the bathtub, where it can drain. But it is stored on the wall up there over the sink.

Sometimes you forget that the shunt switch is turned to "shower" instead of "sink" AND you have replaced the shower head on the wall.

Looking to brush your teeth and BOOM!  That was messy. 

5. EARTH Story! 

So I'm workin' one night, when "I-san" a worker in the lab, who speaks only a little english, gets up and starts saying "oscillate" ????  Odd.  

So, I get up and he's pointing to the mini-fridge shaped air vent sitting above my seat (above). Big, but held up by big metal struts. It is ROCKING back and forth. The rest of the lab, the floor seems perfectly stationary.  "Ground is shaking because of Earth moving" He says. My eyes open wide, as I grasp what he is saying and realize, "Oh crap, we're having an earthquake!"  

It was a 5.1... and I very nearly ignored it. Yow. 

Info for the quake can be found here. 

There's a HUGE Diversity  of starfishes in Japan...

Whew! I'm winding down the trip to Tsukuba/Tokyo and the National Museum of Nature and Science!  I'm finding a HUGE diversity of sea stars in the collections. When I arrived, there was an estimated 200 species in Japan. When I leave, this number will be significantly higher!  Many of them will be from deep-sea habitats.

Hopefully, this trip will only be Part One!

5 Unusual Invertebrates that People Eat! (it takes an Invert Zoo Class to know what some of them are!)

Okay you invertebrate zoologists out there!! How many phyla can YOU recognize on the plates above???   By the end of this blog you WILL know! (and maybe, you will hate me for telling you)

Everyone seems to have a "Weirdest foods" list out there-but here at Echinoblog we offer you only the STRANGEST sampling of bizarre marine invertebrates cuisine! forget insects, snails or shrimp!

Some of the edible (?) metazoans below are usually only noticed by marine biologists, zoologists and the well-studied biologist!

What better application of knowing the strangest of marine invertebrate phyla can there be than to recognize it on your plate? Its scientific name disguised by colorful cultural argot  or perhaps in a different language?

1. SEA SQUIRTS! (Halocynthia sp. possibly H. roretzi). The Korean name for sea squirts as food is: meongge (although there are several more)
Sea squirts are a kind of tunicate, which are in turn members of the phylum Chordata (the group humans and other vertebrates belong to) and when alive they look like this:

As it turns out, sea squirts are eaten all over the world, including Japan (called hoya and maboya) and Korea (meongge, and in a stew called agujim). They also eat sea squirts in France, Italy, Greece, and Chile .
Images of sea squirts eaten in Korea. Image by scbrianchan

image by scbrianchan

A video showing preparation. Sea squirts are filter feeders and processing water through their body is a primary function. Thus, drainage seems to be an important feature...

when cooked and prepared it looks like this

image by seoxcookie

or this..

Image by toughkidcst

sometimes served with oysters...

Image by Food Fetishist

UPDATE February, 2014. I've actually tried hoya in Tokyo! The raw stuff! Its got a very...sour, almost soapy taste. Not for everyone.. but I'm told that its an acquired taste. Folks who grew up with it, LOVE it...

 

2. ECHIURAN WORMS! aka "fat inkeeper worm" aka "penis fish" aka gaebul (genus Urechis)
Most people have never heard of this phylum of worms. Commonly known as "spoon worms"

One of the best studied examples is Urechis caupo, occurring on the North pacific coast -living in muddy burrows which serve as homes for many other commensals, including tiny shrimps and fishes.

Image by Peter_r

But in Korea, a related species, Urechis unicintus is collected and eaten!

Apparently it is cut up into segments and served while twitching....

In other cuisines, it is cooked and stir fired..

the picture above? gaebul and mongae aka Echiuran and Sea squirt!!

and uh yeah, there's a belief that eating these imbues men with more virility. That seems unlikely....

3. INARTICULATE BRACHIOPOD  (Lingula sp.)
Brachiopods are one of the oldest animals observed in the geological record, going as far back as 500 million years. In some cases-they appear relatively unchanged appearing very much as they do as fossils.

and now we eat them.

This gives you an idea of what they look like alive..living in a muddy habitat

Image by Changhua Coast Conservation Action

There are two shells that fit over the animal on the top and bottom. Bivalves and other clams are fundamentally different in that their shells are oriented on the body left-right. 

In one group, known as the "inarticulate" brachiopods, there is a big fleshy structure called the "peduncle" which emerges from the shell

Biologist Richard Fortey noted that they tasted like "straw' (quote is here).

Here is an image of brachiopods as sold in a food market in Makassar.

Image by Arthur Anker

Here is another from a Thai market.

Image by Peter Roopnarine

In Indonesia this dish is called Probolinggo TEBALAN. The blog linked here suggests that Lingula  tastes "sweet and spicy" whereas others I've seen suggest that it is served with a tasty curry.

Huh. Brachiopod curry. NOT something I was expecting to write today!

4. STALKED BARNACLES! Barnacles. Those well-known shelled crustaceans that live on docks and use their "legs" to filter feed out of the water like this:

These of course are what's known as "goose" or "goose-necked" barnacles because of the long, prominent stalk attached to the body sitting on top.

Yes. People eat them! I've seen them in Paris and Belgium.

Imge by RobertoGrego

In some places, barnacles are quite expensive...

Image by erikamussen

Other "unstalked" barnacles are also eaten! 

Image by charclam

In the Azores and Portugal, these are called cracas!  Basically, these are boiled "acorn" barnacles. 

Image by Bellyglad

5. SEA STARS! (family Asteriidae- species: Asterias amurensis)
So, first let me distinguish between the "starfish for show" pictures that one sees around like this versus apparently real accounts of people who eat the gonads of starfish as seen in the video below..

Image by Robin G. Ewsing

Honestly, eating sea stars baffles me. And I  recommend against it (as here) and here but obviously, people really eat these.  On the plus side, Asterias amurensis (the species shown below) is a problematic invasive in Australia (as I wrote here)

so maybe there is a silver lining to this?