Alison Young
Community science | Biodiversity | Intertidal ecology | Pottery | Nudibranchs!
Director of Outreach Programs at iNaturalist
I spend lots of time in the tidepools, love marine inverts and wildflowers, and probably have clay on me somewhere.
she/her
- Some recent(ish) #pottery outta the kiln! 1: birdbath, 2: drippy cake stand, 3: vase crackled with sodium silicate, 4: oil bottles.
- Baby sunflower star, Pycnopodia helianthoides. My first time seeing live ones in the wild since 2013! 🤩😍
- Spent some time in Bermuda last week with my face in the water. It was pretty lovely, lots of #corals and #seahares and #fishes and even a #nudibranch.
- Strrrrrrrrretch! #anemone
- More #nudibranchs from Monday's #tidepool trip. 🤩
- Great low tides this week — get out to the #tidepools if you can! Got up early yesterday to find these #nudibranch gems.
- Spent a couple morning low tides this week in the #tidepools near Morro Bay. Saw some fun stuff, like #nudibranchs, including the tiniest Hopkins' Rose I've ever seen!
- Lots of sparkly Branched Dendronotid #nudibranchs (Dendronotus venustus) hanging out on the docks in Morro Bay today.
- Reposted by Alison YoungThe latest update to our free and fun Seek by iNaturalist app adds more than 60k species to its image recognition model! It will now also use your location to provide more accurate IDs! www.inaturalist.org/seek
- Just tryna live my best #lowtidelife, getting out to the #tidepools when I can! Yesterday was big surf & a mediocre low tide, but still managed to find a good group of #nudibranchs & thoroughly enjoyed myself.
- Just an #octopus doing octopus things in the #tidepools.
- Reposted by Alison Young🎉 Celebrating 100,000 Modeled Taxa in the iNaturalist Open Range Map Dataset! To mark this milestone, we're making model-generated distribution data even more accessible. Explore, analyze, and use this data to power biodiversity research! 🌍🔍 www.inaturalist.org/posts/106918
- Literally the best selfie I have ever taken. No notes. #nudibranch #tidepools
- Hey hey, @inaturalist.bsky.social is up & running!
- Our Observation of the Day is this colorful bedwed Ornate Cow Tick (Dermacentor reticulatus), seen in Belarus by shapomacro! More details at: www.inaturalist.org/observations...
- Okay but hear me out: intertidal snails have the cutest faces. #tidepools #snails
- One of my fun finds from the weekend in the #tidepools was this baby Giant California Sea Cucumber! I've only ever found them farther north and have only ever seen them full-grown, so it was an unexpected sighting.
- Spent both days this weekend in the #tidepools at a couple of my favorite sites. Things felt a bit churned up from the recent storms, but still spotted many cool creatures, including many #nudibranchs. Here are a few of them.
- Today was #FatInnkeeperWorm day! Searching the mud flats of Bodega Bay for these worms and other interesting bay creatures.
- My favorite souvenir from #COP16 in Cali, Colombia. Now more pertinent than ever. Print from La Linterna: lalinternacali.com
- 'Tis the season for California Fetid Adderstongue flowers! Took a little iNaturalist staff field trip to say hi to these stinky yet beautiful blooms. #fetidadderstongue #inaturalist
- Happy Lunar New Year! For the Year of the Snake, here's one of my favorite #snake friends, the Sharp-tailed Snake. They eat slugs so they like hanging out in my backyard & garden. #lunarnewyear #yearofthesnake
- Not us waiting patiently for a Virginia Rail to emerge from the reeds while we were watching Sandhill Cranes... only to have our only glimpse be in the grasp of this Barn Owl. 😂
- The cacophony of a thousand Sandhill Cranes flying in at sunset.
- Eight years ago today...
- Six-armed #seastars (Leptasterias spp.) can be pretty amusing when they're regrowing arms. Good for a chuckle in the #tidepools. 📸 1 & 2: shooting stars 📸 3: big-little-big-little-big-litte 📸 4: when every day is leg day 😂
- Tiny #seastars = big joy. ⭐ 1: Six-armed star (Leptasterias sp.) 2: Mottled Henricia (Henricia pumila) 3: Purple Sun Star (Solaster endeca) 4: Bat star (Patiria miniata) #tidepools #tidepooling #starfish
- Marine inverts are my favorites, but I do love #birds as well. Some of my favorite finds in Hawai'i were #endemic birds in the forests of Mauna Kea. 1: ʻOmaʻo (Myadestes obscurus) 2: Hawai'i 'Elepaio (Chasiempis sandwichensis) 3: ʻIʻiwi (Drepanis coccinea) 4: Hawaiʻi ʻAmakihi (Chlorodrepanis virens)
- There were SO MANY PEOPLE out on the reef, but it was still a nice afternoon in the #tidepools, complete with some #nudibranchs.
- There are some very nice low tides coming up at the end of the week and through the weekend, I would recommend finding yourself some #tidepools to visit. Always happy to offer suggestions & tips for #tidepooling.
- I usually only find their shells, but spotting a live Appleseed Erato (Hespererato vitellina) in the #tidepools is magical – especially when they have their mantle out like this one. Extra bonus for the cute little amphipod friend whispering secrets.
- Meet the colonial #hydroid Schuchertinia milleri, aka Miller hydractinia, hedgehog hydroid, or (my fave) snail fur. It ranges from Vancouver Island down to Monterey Bay. I've only spotted it a few times while #tidepooling, and it's a treat every time!
- Last sunset of 2024 | First sunrise of 2025
