-Funding for "Coastal Kingdom" is provided by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, which proudly supports this program.

Through the generosity of our members and donors, the ETV endowment has funded educational and entertaining programming like "Coastal Kingdom" for more than 40 years.

♪♪ -This wetland is considered an ephemeral and fishless wetland, and by ephemeral I mean that it dries up part of the time.

And because it dries up, fish can't get established here.

And I don't mean there are no fish, there mosquitofish and little tiny stuff, but there are no big carnivorous fish like catfish and bass and bluegills.

But that doesn't mean there aren't predators here.

Beneath these tannin-stained waters are a variety of insects, spiders, and other arthropods.

Today we're going to take a look at the hidden world of aquatic invertebrates.

♪♪ ♪♪ So look at that little guy.

Okay, we got something big on.

There we go.

We've got the bird, and there's already a chick in there.

♪♪ ♪♪ One of the best ways to figure out what's in a wetland like this is to use a dip net.

And so what I'm going to do is just take some scoops like this and just see what I can find.

♪♪ Okay, here's something really, really interesting.

And I've got to be careful how I handle this one.

This is one called a giant water bug.

And this is sort of the definition of aquatic invertebrate predator, especially in fresh water.

Look at this thing.

So it's an insect, it's a true bug, so it's a hemipteran.

But this -- this is an animal that is so good at what it does.

First of all, it needs to get air from up on the surface to the spiracles of the body so it can breathe.

So there's a little tube right here.

And what they can do is just hang upside down with that tube sticking out of the water so they can breathe.

But what's really impressive to these is look at the arms on it.

So this is an animal that has very strong front appendages, and so what it will do is grab a hold of a fish or a tadpole or another insect and then it has these piercing sucking mouthparts.

And so what it does is just jabs a hole in the animal, injects digestive enzymes, and then sucks out the insides.

I mean, it'd be terrifying if these got really, really big.

I mean, they're little guys and I have been bitten a couple times and it hurts like crazy, but it poses no real danger to people.

But if you're a small animal, like a tadpole or another insect, or a little mosquitofish or something, this is a major, major predator.

Now, the other thing that's interesting is they have to fly to mate.

So a lot of times, especially if you're an area where there's very bright lights around a sports field or something like that, you'll see these flying around.

Giant water bug.

And even the name of this, this one's called Lethocerus americanus.

I mean, that even sounds awesome, doesn't it?

So these guys are great swimmers, so I'm going to let it just swim on off.

♪♪ Okay, here's a spider.

So you notice this has eight legs and it's got -- you see the spots on it.

But these are major predators too.

So what they do is sit on the edge of a lotus pad or a lily pad or something and kind of hang down.

And what they can do is actually go underwater, grab a small fish or tadpole and then pull it up and feed on it.

And the other thing that's in here is a little dragonfly larvae.

And this is a dragonfly nymph, or naiad is another good name for it, and this is a little tyke.

Looks like probably one of the skimmers, one of the Libellulidaes, and this probably would need to get a little bigger before it turned into a dragonfly.

But these animals are impressive predators.

For one thing, they have mouthparts that they can kind of fire out to catch small animals and see if I can get this one to kind of pop the mouthparts out.

There you can see it's almost like a little spoon that fires out and, you know, catches small animals and then brings them back to the mouthparts.

Amazing little creatures.

They also can propel themselves by using water propulsion.

So what they do is take in water and then fire it out their body, and that moves them forward or backwards.

A lot of these remain naiads or nymphs for a real long period of time, some of them for more than one year in the water, and then they may only fly as dragonflies for about six weeks.

So the larval stage is a really important -- important part of their life cycle.

♪♪ ♪♪ Got him.

Whoa.

That wasn't real pretty, but I did catch the dragonfly.

It's one that I wanted to see.

So this is one of the skimmers, and it's called a Carolina saddlebags.

And so look at this beautiful animal.

And they're called saddlebags because they have these things in the back wings that look almost like saddlebags that would go on a horse or on something else.

So dragonflies as adults are one of the most amazing predators on Earth.

For one thing, they have a success rate -- You know, a lot of predators catch stuff 20% of the time, 30% of the time.

Entomologists think that this species can catch up 90% of the time.

Now, they've got some really impressive tools to do that.

They're incredibly fast fliers.

Some of them can fly 20 or 30 miles an hour.

They also have 360-degree vision.

And if you look at the eye, the eye is so big they can see behind them, in front of them.

They also have the ability to fly vertically.

They can go up, down, right, left, forward, backwards.

They can fly just about any way they want to, and that allows them to catch stuff on the wing.

And that's primarily what they do.

This species is going to intercept things as they fly by, and a lot of times feed on them while it's flying.

So, amazing predators.

Of course, this is just one species.

We have lots of skimmers, and then we have darners and clubtails and a whole bunch of other ones.

As adults, they're major predators, but remember, they only fly for just -- just a few weeks.

But again, as a larva, they spend a lot of time underwater.

All right, let's let this -- this one fly off.

There he goes.

♪♪ Okay, here's some kind of interesting -- It's a salamander larvae.

So not an invertebrate.

And it looks like this is probably a mole salamander.

Yep.

That's what it looks like.

Boy, they're interesting little guys.

So these -- these, you know, start in a wetland like this, and eventually they get big enough where they can metamorphose or turn into adults, but they stay in the wetland for up to a year or more before they go out on the land.

♪♪ ♪♪ So guys, we've moved to a different spot and it's actually really shady in here.

It's a lot cooler in here, but this is one of my favorite wetlands and there's a neat little boardwalk here.

But most importantly I think we'll see some species here that we didn't see other places.

So here's something really neat.

This is a larva of a beetle.

This is one called Cybister.

And hopefully if we dip around a little bit we'll catch the adult.

But the larvae is a voracious predator.

And then even when they turn into adult beetles, they can prey on other things as well, but this has got some growing to do.

But fierce little guy.

So the interesting thing about these is they have fangs and they have venom, so what they'll do is grab something, puncture it, and then inject venom, which of course kills the animal and injects digestive enzymes so that they can feed on it.

I've been bitten by these a couple of times, so I'm going to put it down before I get bit.

Okay, so here is the adult predaceous diving beetle or Cybister is the genus.

Its just got a great name.

And so these are really athletic little guys and trying to keep it -- keep it in the net, but they've got really interesting legs.

So of course this is an insect, so it has six legs.

But the back legs are feathered so they're almost like oars.

These are spectacular swimmers.

But one of the neatest things that Cybister can do, and a lot of these beetles can do, is they can -- the elytra, the covering of the wings, they can kind of hide air underneath that elytra, that wing covering and then they can use it to breathe.

So they can stay under water for a long time just by breathing the air that they -- they capture.

So the bite on these is a pinch.

It's not real bad, but it's not nearly as bad as the venom that the larvae have.

So these are terrific swimmers and I've got a bucket over here, so I want to put it in the bucket and see how it swims.

Here's something kind of interesting.

So this is -- looks like a dragonfly larvae that crawled up out of the water and then molted its skin.

So what happened is this nymph, or naiad, climbed out of the water, came up here, the back split, and a dragonfly came out of it.

It's absolutely amazing when you think about it.

Now of course, when they first come out, they're shriveled and it takes a while for them to spread their wings out and for the fluids to pump into the wings and for it to harden.

But after just a couple of hours, they fly off.

So if you look right over my shoulder right here, there is what's called a blue dasher.

And blue dashers are perchers, so they're going to spend a lot of their time just sitting in one spot.

In fact, if they do fly, they typically come back to that same spot and they have kind of a territory and they just sit there and they like to ambush things.

Now there's other species that are more fliers, you know, some of the big darners and things like that that are constantly patrolling and they're nailing stuff out of the air a lot of the time, but these perchers -- off it went.

But I'll bet it'll come right back to the same spot.

Anyway, this is kind of interesting.

Different dragonflies have different strategies.

♪♪ Here's something really cool.

This is a water scorpion.

And water scorpion, they're one of the most cryptic bugs I can think of, I mean, they look like a stick and they blend in just beautifully with the natural structure of the water.

But they're major predators.

In fact, they're called a water scorpion because they have a venomous -- sort of a venomous bite.

And they can bite people, but it's not dangerous at all.

But some really neat adaptations -- First of all, they have those piercing, sucking mouthparts, so many -- that so many of the true bugs have.

Also, they have this long tube so they can stick that tube up, and it allows them to kind of hang underwater and then use that tube to breathe.

And again, so cryptic, so camouflaged that it helps them to really blend in.

In fact, here's another one.

So there's two of them in here.

And again, there's probably more than that, but all I see is two.

So I'm going to pop these right back in.

♪♪ It's hard to see, but underneath these turbid waters is an incredible garden of life.

So there's lots of marine organisms.

So we're in saltwater now.

And anything that has structure, dock pilings, oysters, pretty much anything, even the bottom of boats is going to be colonized by a variety of marine invertebrates.

So what we're going to do is look around and just see what's here.

And these aren't big, showy animals like dolphins and enormous fish, but they're just as exciting and they're just as important.

Okay, so it's low tide, so let's start kind of at the high tide line.

And there's some cool stuff right off the bat and one of them isn't an animal.

And if you look really closely all along here, that's Spartina seed.

In fact, not only is it along the edge of the dock here, all in this rack there's these little tiny Spartina seeds.

And that's because the seed heads have been washed back and forth with the tides, wind, and it all ended up in the water, and it's just going to broadcast itself and get reestablished in other parts of the marsh here.

I mean, just fabulous in the just sheer amount of seeds here is absolutely incredible.

So as we move down -- this ramp's a little slick so I'm going to be careful -- but as we move down, this is an area that has water on it.

This is kind of mid-tide that's underwater more of the time.

And if you look right here you notice there's clumps of oysters everywhere.

So they've -- they've colonized these dock floats.

Still some more Spartina seed there.

And even this little piece of wood right here has a nice clump of oysters on it.

And then also look right here, something that eats oysters.

So these are raccoon footprints.

So there's probably a lot to eat here.

Crabs and of course oysters, and all kinds of things.

Okay, well, let's get in the water and look around a little bit.

Now it's kind of -- I'm going to try not to cloud up the water too much.

Water is actually pretty clear.

It's cool out and the tide's not running much, so it's pretty cool.

Just see what I can see.

I've got -- I've got waders on mostly because the water's cold.

But you know what?

These waders, I don't think dried out completely from the last outing.

So it's kind of like not wearing waders actually.

If I reach down here... Something really, really cool.

And these are sea whips.

Now sea whips are gorgonians.

Which is just a cool name, isn't it?

In fact, the scientific name of this is Leptogorgia virgulata, which is just kind of fun to say, but it's a soft coral and it is an animal.

It's a group of colonial animals that produce kind of a skeleton of sorts, and that's what they live in.

So "sea whip" is a great name for it, and this is one that kind of goes back and forth with the current.

And it's got some kind of neat things.

Notice there's nothing colonized on this.

And that's because these things exude a substance that keeps animals -- it repels animals and keeps them from adhering to it.

Because remember, everything here that's in the water is going to be colonized by something.

All the dock pilings at the bottom of the boats, everything.

If it's left there long enough, there is going to be animals attached to it.

So it exudes stuff that not only keeps things from attaching to it, but also a lot of animals won't eat it because of the stuff that exudes.

And this comes in a variety of colors.

This is kind of a light tan color.

Here's a purple one.

I mean, it's really beautiful.

We don't really think of our -- our salt marshes as having soft corals like this, but -- and there's lots of them here.

Let's see what else we can find.

So this is an area that's going to be colonized most of the time.

And if I reach underneath, I can actually pull some stuff off.

And wow, I'm going to grab a little plastic container and we'll take a closer look at some of this.

Okay, so here this looks like either garlic sponge or it could be kind of a sun sponge, I'm not sure.

But it's a sponge of some sort for sure.

I noticed here's a barnacle.

And one of the things that happens is if an organism colonizes, you know, something like a dock piling, it often gets covered up by something else.

So I'm going to pop this one in here.

Here's a crab.

Here's one of those little porcelain crabs.

I mean, there is an abundance of life here.

And, you know, in warmer conditions, there can be even more.

I'm going to pull this apart a little bit.

You know, a lot of people refer to these things as dock fouling organisms -- things like sea squirts and -- and sponges and stuff.

But I don't think that's really fair.

I mean, they -- they obviously, you know, if you own a boat, it's [chuckles] -- it's going to -- and you leave it in the water, it's going to become encrusted with a lot of this stuff.

But this is important stuff.

I mean, these are animals that are important, ecologically.

They're inconvenient for us, but that doesn't mean that they're not important and we shouldn't have them.

So I think dock fouling is a little bit unfair.

Boy, lots of sponges here, a lot.

You know, the number of porcelain crabs is really impressive, here's another one.

So this is a porcelain crab, and they get the name porcelain crab because they're really fragile.

And if you handle them too roughly, they have the ability to -- to dump the limbs, basically lose their claws and things like that.

And so I'm going to make sure I don't handle this too roughly.

This is a filter feeder, so it spends most of its time attached to some sort of structure, and then it tries to pick, you know, organisms out of the -- the water as it flows by and then moves it to the mouth part.

So it's kind of a filter feeder, but it's using a slightly different apparatus than some things do.

Oh, here's another porcelain crab.

There's a good one.

And what's neat about porcelain crabs is they're very flat.

Let me show you what I mean.

They're extremely flat so that they can fit into all kinds of crevices and things and slide in between oysters and in little crevices in a dock and things like that.

And this allows them to just protect themselves from all kinds of predators.

Fish would eat these, pinfish, and grunt, and all kinds of other stuff, you know, things like pigfish would eat these for sure.

Okay, guys, this is really cool.

And this is when sometimes you have to have kind of a scope to look at, but this is one of the polychaete worms.

And if you look at it very closely, it's worm like, but it's divided into little segments, and those segments also have little appendages, almost like little hairs.

And that is what helps them to crawl.

And these are really, really good at hiding in places like this, hiding amongst these other organisms.

And of course, you can imagine any small fish is going to eat these.

Very tiny, some of them get about this big, but most of them are much smaller, like this little one.

And boy, you know, I don't think anybody knows how to identify all the different, you know, types of polychaete worms around here.

But it's impressive.

Okay, I'm going to take this little net and I think -- I'll try that again.

And all I'm doing is just kind of waving it by the dock and I think, yep.

Sure enough, here's what I was after.

Little tiny shrimp.

And these are grass shrimp and these are adults.

So this is not a species that gets very big.

And they need this structure, so what they're doing is feeding on things that live along the dock piling here.

And also they're protecting themselves from predators.

Let me try one more and see if I can find some more.

You know, structure is everything.

You've got to have a place to hide and you've got to have a place to hold on to.

As the tide comes in, the water really moves in and out of here.

There's -- There's a good one right there, a couple good ones.

All right, but what I'm going to do is pour these back in and I'm going to make sure they're close to the structure right here.

And I think what we'll do, the tide is -- is coming in very, very rapidly, and so I think what we can do is get out on one of the docks and then just kind of hang over underneath and see what we can find there.

Okay, let's see what's underneath this dock.

Actually, here's something that's kind of neat.

And this is one of the square crabs.

And so this is one that can live up on the dock, you know, can live up on land part of the time.

And one of the really neat things they have is as long as their gills are wet, they don't have to be underwater or anything.

So they very terrestrial for a crab, but they still have to reproduce in the water and they still have to wet their gills periodically.

So squareback crabs, sometimes you'll hear them called wharf crabs and things like that, but they have a really nice square back and you can see where they get the name.

This one's actually missing a couple legs now, it will probably regenerate those.

But anyway, we'll put this one down and let it take off.

All right.

Reach underneath here.

Probably the best bet is just to kind of lie down and... Let's see what's here.

Oh, yeah.

Look at what's on this.

This is what I was hoping to see.

And there's some -- Looks like there's some little crabs and stuff running around in here, but there's something really neat.

These are sea squirts.

These particular ones are called sea grapes.

And they get the name "sea squirt," because let's see if we can get a couple of these to squirt.

See them squirting water out?

These are tunicates.

Really kind of interesting animals.

They're very simple.

They have kind of an in siphon and an out siphon.

And what they do is filter feed.

So they're processing lots of water, they're pulling out all kinds of small animals, microscopic things out of the water column and they can filter feed and they cling onto anything.

And so, you know, this is a little bumper for a boat, but this could just as easily be the bottom of the boat or all over the bottom of the dock.

So that's really cool.

But, you know, there's a whole nother micro world that we haven't looked at.

So I'm going to get a water sample, and we're going to take this back to the lab and have a look at what's in it.

♪♪ So we brought our bucket of stuff back from the dock and we transferred it into this bin.

And you just wouldn't believe what's in here.

I can see a lot of stuff.

There's little tiny things swimming around I can't even identify yet.

Sea squirts, crabs, hydroids.

Man, just lots of bryozoans.

Lots of cool stuff.

Really fun digging through this stuff with your hands looking for the really small things.

Whoa, look at that!

Things keep kind of popping out.

Wow!

Look at these two.

So these just popped out.

You know, that's a pretty big crab to hide in just a little clump of stuff about that big around.

Boy, they're cryptic.

So I've transferred some stuff into this little dish.

And so now what we can do, you can start with a hand lens, and I can see quite a bit of stuff with the hand lens, but even better is a microscope kind of a dissecting scope.

And that allows you to see some of this stuff a lot -- a lot closer.

And just -- just glancing through it, I can -- I can see some really, really neat stuff.

Let's see what we have here.

I see some polychaete worms.

Actually a couple different kinds.

And then also some hydroids... and some animals that live on those hydroids.

I'll tell you what's kind of interesting that we picked up, and pretty much every sample we had is Spartina seeds.

And that's not surprising at all because there are Spartina seeds everywhere.

Again, the Spartina seeded, all that stuff got washed out by the tide and wind, and it's just covering the creeks.

So that's kind of neat.

Uh, lots of crabs.

In fact, this porcelain crab, you can see it actually filter feeding.

I mean, this stuff is so tiny.

Some of it you can see with the human eye, but you really can't make out what it is unless you use a scope.

Man, there's all kinds of cool stuff in here.

This is just a whole nother world.

And it's one of those things that's -- it's kind of addictive.

I mean, you start looking at just a couple of things and before long, you know, a couple hours have gone by and you -- it's exploring at a micro level and it's really, really fun.

Of course this is something you can do with pond water.

You know, you don't have to have a marine sample.

This is -- If you have a pond nearby, you can look at this stuff and just -- And it really doesn't matter that you identify everything you see because I don't think really anybody can do that.

But what's fun is knowing that it's there and knowing that there's just this incredible diversity of life, sometimes just in a drop of water.

So we've looked at a lot of aquatic invertebrates in this episode, both marine and freshwater.

And obviously this is the smallest sample of what's out there.

But one thing's for sure, it's the habitat that matters.

If you don't have the wetland, if you don't have clean water, then none of this stuff can survive.

So we need to do everything we can to understand.

I mean, look at how many cool things we didn't even know existed until we looked through this microscope.

So we've got to protect these habitats and do everything we can to take care of them.

Thanks for joining us on "Coastal Kingdom."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Funding for "Coastal Kingdom" is provided by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, which proudly supports this program.

Through the generosity of our members and donors, the ETV endowment has funded educational and entertaining programming like "Coastal Kingdom" for more than 40 years.