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Facility on North Oregon Coast to Give Birth Again |
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Covering 180 miles of Oregon coast travel: Astoria, Seaside, Cannon Beach, Manzanita, Nehalem, Wheeler, Rockaway, Garibaldi, Tillamook, Oceanside, Pacific City, Lincoln City, Depoe Bay, Newport, Wadport, Yachats & Florence.
3/1/07
Secrets of the Season |
Facility on North Oregon Coast to Give Birth Again
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| Infant skates not long after hatching months ago (photo: Seaside Aquarium) |
(Seaside, Oregon) – It wasn’t the stork that brought these babies in: it was actually beachcombers and winds from the west.
The Seaside Aquarium will again be proud parents – in about six months. A group of skate egg casings were found recently on a north Oregon coast beach, which aquarium staff have determined will probably “hatch” in about six months into little baby skates.
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“We have babies!,” proclaimed aquarium spokesperson Tiffany Boothe, after looking into the small, handful of a brood brought in by locals wandering the beach. “We have one skate egg casing with four healthy embryos developing inside. “They probably have about six months before they are ready to leave their protective casing. Until then they cannot be on display. Their eyes are sensitive to light at this stage.”
Boothe said the Seaside Aquarium already has six juvenile skates that are about six months old. They were brought to the aquarium about a year ago and took six months to hatch as well.
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| Skate egg case (with a shark egg case just above it) |
“The last few days the wind has been blowing out of the west,” Boothe said. “When the wind blows out of the west, it usually causes things to wash onto the beach. It is possible to find ‘burps,’ egg casings, and even glass floats.”
“Whale burps” is the nickname for rock-hard bundles of sea grass that have been compressed together. There are also “ocean burps,” a very loose term for bundles of sundry objects that get stuck together and tossed up by the tide, which often yield still living specimens like live egg casings from various species.
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Egg
casings of this type are often referred to as “Mermaid Purses.”
Skate egg cases are frequently found by local beachcombers. Boothe said
that although its appearance resembles seaweed, it is a very tough, protective
casing which can contain anywhere from two to seven embryos per casing.
“Adult female skates will drop these on the ocean floor, where the casing will drift for nine to twelve months,” Boothe said. “During that time, the embryos feed upon a yolk sack that they are attached to. When the babies are developed enough to be self-sufficient, one end of the casing will open up and the baby skates - now 3.5 inches long – will emerge.”
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| Skate at Seaside Aquarium |
This particular group of skate eggs casings was discovered by a group of locals combing the beach for fun. Aquarium manager Keith Chandler said the sharp eyes of the finders is the result of a public education program which tells local residents over and over to keep an eye out for such things, as well as other oddities on the beach, and then bring them in to the aquarium.
“We’ve
been promoting this for years,” Chandler said. “It’s
been in local papers, in the schools - all over the local media. We tell
them to bring that stuff in. We tell’em all the time, and it gets
them excited about this. And they do bring this stuff in.
“When visitors learn about it, they start to bring this in too. We have this saying, that if it’s ‘beautiful, ugly or weird on the beach, think of the aquarium and feel free to bring it in.’ “
Chandler said the west winds have been blowing some interesting objects in recently, including the corpses of a fur seal, a porpoise and other deceased animals.
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BREATHTAKING
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