Hanky-Panky in the Sea
Who Knew They Did it That Way?
I have a couple of writing pals who I poke fun at because of either too much or too little sex in their books. Well, I thought I’d wade into those murky waters and try my hand at sex writing. To be upfront, most of this newsletter originally appeared in Homewaters, which has more sex in it than all of my previous books combined; for dedicated fans, I am sure this was a pleasure!
Rockfish - Unlike most marine fishes, in which males and females broadcast their sperm and eggs and simply hope for the best—called “spray and pray”—rockfish have sex. Their mating, a sort of dance, shudder, and penetrate, results in internally fertilized eggs that develop into embryos, which females release—many scientific papers use the Playdohesque term extrude—as larvae about half the length of a grain of rice. Rockfish are amazingly fertile with both the ability and the drive to keep cranking out the kids and some fecund seniors are known to reproduce at well over 100 years old.
Geoduck - Few critters in Puget Sound are as infamous as geoducks. If more people knew about the reproductive proclivities of these big bivalves, who knows how their notoriety would spread. Early winter is when geoducks begin to develop what one biologist called “sex products.” Triggered by warming water, algae density, and high tidal exchange, male geoducks eject sperm via their siphon, in 30-minute-long eruptions of free floating swimmers. Females respond by releasing as many as twenty million eggs, multiple times in a single year. Like rockfish, geoducks appear to have little reproductive senility; one male was found to still be producing sperm in his 107th year. Unfortunately, scientists had to kill him to learn this.
By they way, baby geoducks are just about the cutest molluskan infant I have ever seen. About the size of pinto bean, they have a wee siphon that wiggles in the waves. It’s enough to make you overlook their adult appearance.
Olympia oyster - Unlike geoducks, Olympia oysters (aka Olys) don’t parse out their reproductive parts into male and female individuals. Instead they are hermaphrodites, which typically begin life as a male then switch regularly between being a female or male, with each individual oyster having its own rhythm of sexuality. As one early biologist wrote: “all possible intergradations between the different phases…are found in young animals, so that it is frequently impossible to assign the individuals to any one of the principal phases of sexuality.”
Depending upon environmental conditions, an Oly can experience his first sexuality as early as the age of five months, when he discharges several hundred thousand sperm balls. Each tightly packed sphere consists of 250 to 2,000 heads-glued-together, tails-wagging sperm. Out in the sea, the glue dissolves and the microscopic male seeds swim off in search of an egg. Fertilization occurs when a female vacuums the sperm into her gills and passes them to her eggs, which are held in her mantle cavity. Ten to twelve days later, she expels her brood of 250,000 to 300,000 larvae, which soon sail the sea in search of a suitable substrate (shells, rock, wood, etc), known in the trade as cultch.
Alas, I don’t know of any upcoming opportunities to continue writing about sex and the sea but I will add that the highlight of this year’s Super Bowl was being outside at a friend’s house, hearing a rather strange noise, and tracking it down two yards over to what appeared to be two mating raccoons. (It was hard to tell because they were in a very darkened tree.) The sounds did not give me the impression of two happy raccoons but it was certainly as interesting as anything happening in the game.
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