So excited to announce the return of the pop-up aquarium in downtown Anacortes! Please help us get the word out! Free Aquarium Sunday, July 26th 12-4 PM The Patio at Dockside Dogs 501 Commercial Ave Anacortes, WA Illustration by @invertebabe.bsky.social 🐙🦑

It’s my first birthday since my dad died and I have been incredible overwhelmed & we haven’t been exactly festive over here. If you are doing well & appreciate what I do & want to send a little cheer, I threw a few books & things into a list. www.amazon.com/registries/g...

Birthday list 2026 | Amazon Gift List

amazon.com

So excited to announce the return of the pop-up aquarium in downtown Anacortes! Please help us get the word out! Free Aquarium Sunday, July 26th 12-4 PM The Patio at Dockside Dogs 501 Commercial Ave Anacortes, WA Illustration by @invertebabe.bsky.social 🐙🦑

It’s my birthday! Send ctenophores! 🐙🦑

Nice, some great zooms on one of these black ctenophores they keep seeing skimming the bottom. @noncompliantcyborg.bsky.social @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 940 #deepwonders #MarineLife

Solidarity to everyone else with neighbors blowing up stupid amounts of shit in their little yards far too close to trees, houses, and other people. May none of our houses burn down, & may they get it out of their system deplete their supply so they don’t repeat it the next several days.

I love having access to a kreisel in the summer. I love cultivating an ever rotating beautiful menagerie of “jellies” to show the students and to bring to the curator of the Invertebrates of the Salish Sea website so he can continue filling out the jellies section.

I’ve been using it for a year and have hit 6000+ but far fewer Ctenophora than you (39 observations of 4 species) but I did see my first Beroe gracilis yesterday- here it is with a Sea Gooseberry inside it which barely fits!

In honor of hitting 10k obs on iNat, some stats: 786 total species 2,421 hydrozoans (45 species) 1,602 nudibranchs (45 species) 1,118 ctenophores (16 species*) 553 echinoderms (19 species) 465 pericarids (40 species) 410 polychaetes (33 species) 103 cephalopods (5 species) Those = 2/3 of it

I crossed the 10,000 observation threshold on iNaturalist today!

I received a funded sci-comm/artist spot for Ctenopalooza cTwo in August! 🥳 Excited to be attending and to share with you all about the meeting.

I forgot that I changed my iNat notifications to no longer include IDs that agree with me without additional comments and was feeling sad thinking my iNat buddies just haven’t been active for a few days only to realize they’ve IDed a ton of my stuff, they just agreed with me.

More dykes on the beach, please! (Just not the shoreline armoring kind!) 🦑🧡🤍🩷🐙

I’ve got photos, names & sizes for all “jellies” on my Salish Sea pelagic invert ID guides. Adding details for each + colored markers for bioluminescence, which is taking a while. I’ve witnessed a lot & @stevehaddock.bsky.social’s 1999 spectra analysis paper helped but there’s a lot more to find.

Yes Dryodora is luminescent.

mazel ctov!

Ctenopalooza Ctwo abstract submitted 🥳

Next week is my dad’s public memorial, the one week the lab director is in-person before sabbatical to coordinate on my outreach grant, ctenopalooza ctwo abstract deadline, leading two days of low tide walks, obnoxious medical testing I have to fast all day for, and vending my city’s Pride. Eek.

Someone please yell at me to actually get my abstract done & turned in for an art & sci comm spot tomorrow. Between working on the memorial service for my dad, the rapidly approaching marine lab season, the (now grant funded) outreach event planning, & all else in life rn, it has not happened yet 🙃

Steve Haddock@stevehaddock.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Attention fans of #ctenophores 🌊🦑🧪 Please consider joining us at the Ctenopalooza Ctwo conference/celebration in California this August. Support is potentially available for artists and communicators. www.mbari.org/event/ctenop... Register soon or miss out on the fun! Meals included!

@stevehaddock.bsky.social do you happen to know if Dryodora glandiformis is bioluminescent? I don’t see it in the list from your 1999 paper with the big list of analyzed spectra y’all did and it’s not immediately apparent elsewhere. I could go out and find one to poke but I figure you’d know.

CT technician position available at the U-M Museum of Zoology/Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology: careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

Happy Pride Month! You know who doesn't change their brand image to rainbow just for June? Ctenophores. They make their gay little rainbows all year. It's a Pride parade in the ocean every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. 366 every four years. 🦑🐙

How I knew I was meant to be driving to see the ctenophores last week:

Monterey Dock Finds 🧵🐙🦑🌿

After 17 hours on the road yesterday, we are home safe after Monterey. I miss Aulacoctena already; it was so hard to say goodbye. I spent long enough sitting on the floor with Aulacoctena that I met the lead jellies aquarist twice, and got invited behind the scenes to show the Beroe my beanie. 🐙🦑

After 17 hours on the road yesterday, we are home safe after Monterey. I miss Aulacoctena already; it was so hard to say goodbye. I spent long enough sitting on the floor with Aulacoctena that I met the lead jellies aquarist twice, and got invited behind the scenes to show the Beroe my beanie. 🐙🦑

A fossil nervous system meets modern neurobiology. We found that a living comb jelly preserves neural architecture remarkably similar to those inferred from Cambrian fossils over 500 million years old 🤩. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

My mom and I had the Into the Deep exhibit all to ourselves at the very start of the morning so she got some pics of me with Aulacoctena.

Aulacoctena on display at @montereybayaquarium.org What an honor to see it in person. 🧪🦑🐙

Yay! Congrats to Janet Voight at the Field who has described a new species of deep-sea octopus from the Galapagos! Microeledone galapagensis! #molluscmonday www.fieldmuseum.org/about/press/...