The bay scallop's eyes and tentacles are adaptations to its motile lifestyle. These "baby blues" can detect the shadows and movements of predators. Also along the edge of its mantle are tentacles equipped with touch and chemical sensitive receptors. These aid the scallop in perceiving its environment as it swims through the water by clapping together its valves. It is that single adductor muscle that we use for food.

Aequipecten irradians grow rapidly throughout their two year life span. Although motile, the bay scallop remains sessile long enough for organisms to use its shell for a substrate.

Knobbed Whelk
Busycon carica
Found subtidally on sandy bottoms, this carnivorous snail is not a voracious eater; one large clam a month usually satisfies them.
First it uses muscular foot to steady and envelop a bivalve. It then forces open the two shells by using the edge of its own shell as a wedge. Finally, it inserts it proboscis and radula into the shell and ingests the clam.

Knobbed Whelk
Body, commonly known as scungili is extended from shell. The hard operculum, which is attached to its muscular foot, functions as a water tight seal. This "trap door" protects the whelks soft body from both predators and dessication.

Hairy Hermit Crab
Pagurus arcuatus.
Using a vacant knobbed whelk shell for protection. Approx. 3in.
Unlike other crabs, their exoskeletons are less calcified and their abdomens are very long. The soft, vulnerable abdomen of the hermit crab rarely leaves the security of its "borrowed" home.

All members of the arthropod phylum have a nonliving exoskeleton and compound eyes composed of many lenses. Crustaceans are the only arthropods with two pairs of antennae. Three pairs of appendages are modified as mouthparts, including the hard mandibles.

Callinectes sapidus
As a voracious predator, the blue claw crab can swiftly attack with its sharp-toothed chelipeds and can pluck a small fish right of the water.
Picking up a blue claw requires both dexterity and temerity...they pack a fierce pinch!

Blue claws belong to the group of swimming crabs, family Portunidae. The two distal leg segments on the last pair of walking legs are flattened into paddles and pivoted to a near-horizontal position. These flexible legs rotate over the carapace in a sculling action to give the crab both lift and propulsion. Over short distances, they can swim at speeds up to one meter per second.

Members of the eelgrass community have unique adaptations which enable them to exchange gases and ingest their specific food source.
Look closely to find the blue claw crab in the center of the picture.

Northern Pipefish
Syngnathus fuscus
Perfectly camouflaged, the long, thin, and mottled brown body resembles the decaying eelgrass drifting on the bay floor.