Field Notes: Eelgrass Sea Hares (Patreon)

Have you heard of eelgrass sea hares? They're tiny sea slugs that look like zebra-striped spoonfuls of jello and live in underwater meadows of eelgrass. To film  his upcoming Deep Look episode about these gastropod mollusks, producer Mike Seely and his team headed to Elkhorn Slough, a large winding estuary off of Monterey Bay. Cinematographer Josh Cassidy and ecologist Brent Hughes of Sonoma State University paddled out into the water with their cameras to film a few underwater shots. They also collected eelgrass and sea hares in buckets to bring back ashore for filming, and set crab traps so they could film a few crabs as well.

In this video,  you can see curious harbor seals checking them out as they work. Once they got back ashore, they constructed a modular studio in a eucalyptus grove.

"We reconstructed the eelgrass habitat for the sea hares inside two different aquaria under a tent we made from stands and black fabric, powering the lights using  my car, " Mike said.

"Brent, Josh, Sonoma State graduate student Madeline Sanchez and I all got some good  workouts shuttling the buckets of sea water about 1/4 mile from the Slough to our 'studio,'" added Mike. "We did it all for the little slugs!”

You'll see this new video next Tuesday; Patreon supporters will get a sneak peek on Friday!

Photos: Mike Seely/KQED