“By the wind“ means sailing into the wind as directly as possible.

“Large“ refers to when the wind is blowing from some compass point behind a ship’s direction of travel, “abaft the beam.”

If a ship ship performed well in both situations, she was said to be a good vessel “by and large“, a phrase we use to this day.

The “by” part of the phrase means “close-hauled.” (This “by” also appears in the term full and by, meaning “sailing with all sails full and close to the wind as possible.”)

When the wind is in that favorable ‘large‘ direction the largest square sails may be set and the ship is able to travel in whatever downwind direction the captain sees fit.

Sorry McD it is “By and large” not “Buy the large”.

Liparometra regalis – Crinoidia – Feather Stars

Etymology
regalis – Latin = ‘of or pertaining to a king’
Crinoidea – Greek from krinon – ‘a lily’

Crynoid Facts:

• They’re not plants – Despite their resemblance to flowers, are not plants. They are echinoderms – animals characterized by their rough, spiny surface and 5 fold symmetry.
• They’re not starfish – They are related to starfish in that they are both echinoids. Like starfish, Crinoids usually have 5 fold symmetry.
• They eat with their arms – They are filter feeder and they wave their feathery arms which are covered with a sticky mucus to capture food -floating detritus. The feathery arms have growths called pinnules. The pinnules have rows of tube feet on each side of a groove running down the center. The tube feet that cover the arms pass the food to the center where it is put into their mouth.
• Crinoids are old… really really old – They have been around since the Ordovician period – 490 million years ago. Paleontologists however, think they could be even older than that.
• You’re more likely to find a crinoid fossil than you are living crinoid – Crinoids today are relatively rare however they were once plentiful and diverse. These echinoderms were at their height during the Paleozoic era (544 to 245 million years ago ). They could be found all over the world, creating forests on the floor of the shallow seas of this time period. There were so many in places, that thick limestone beds were formed almost entirely from their body parts piled on top of each other.

Why would anyone get excited about T. rex, when you have crinoids !

Robert Bakker – paleontologist

Multipore Sea Star – Linckia muitifora
Interestingly the Multipore exhibits autotomy (self amputation) and often sheds one or more arms. In this process, the arms become detached at various positions and each can grow into a new individual. This happens with such frequency that it is considered to be a means of asexual reproduction. Few individuals are found that do not exhibit some evidence of prior autotomy. Individuals always lose their largest arm to autotomy. From the “tail” of the comet, the arm that was dropped off, 4 arms are slowly growing back to form a new complete sea star. As the process continues, the little arms grow bigger, and they will eventually end up looking like stars again. It appears that most of the populations can be made up of these comet individuals. The sexual (gonochoric) produced embryos hatch into planktonic larvae spending up to two years in this stage before settleing and metamorphose into pentamorous juveniles which develop into young sea stars with stubby arms.

In a study on Hawaii, it was found that the detachment of an arm is not caused by a sudden snap. Most fractures take place about 1 inch from the disk. A small crack appears on the lower surface which spreads to adjacent parts, then the tube feet on the arm and the body pull the two parts of the animal in opposite directions. The event may take about one hour to complete. The damaged tissues take about 10 days to heal and the animal grows a new arm over the course of several months. The detached arm is known as a “comet” and moves about independently. It takes about 10 months to regenerate a new disk with arms 0.5 inch in length.

Sea stars can probably undergo asexual reproduction more easily than other animals because they have most of their organs repeated in each of their arms. Also, they don’t have a centralized nervous system, it would probably be a trickier thing to do if they also had to regenerate a full brain. Because of the position of their mouth, it is also one of the first thing to be regrown, so they don’t have to starve for too long before they can feed again. If many species of sea stars can regrow a missing arm, only a few can, like Linckia multifora, regrow a full animal from just an arm.

Etymology
Linclda – The genus is named after the German naturalist Johann Heinrich Linck
muitifora – multi– ‘much or many’ and +fora = ‘forum’?

Halley’s Comet is arguably the most famous comet. It is a “periodic” comet and returns to Earth’s vicinity about every 75 years, making it possible for a human to see it twice in his or her lifetime. The last time it was here was in 1986, and it is projected to return in 2061.

White-Tailed Tropicbird – Phaethon lepturus

• Tail Streamers are white and can be up to seventeen inches long.
• Forages by plunging into water from flight, submerging briefly; sometimes by swooping down to surface without striking water, taking flying fish in the air.
• May feed most actively in early morning and late afternoon.
• Courtship displays include two birds flying gracefully in unison, one above the other, with higher bird bending tail down to touch tail of lower bird.

Etymology
Phaethon – Greek mythology- son of Helios; killed when trying to drive his father’s chariot and came too close to earth
epturus: Greek leptós = ‘slender, thin’, and +ourá = ‘tail’

Songs and Calls:

A piping “keck-keck-keck”

The Lion’s mane jellyfish – Cyanea capillata – is the largest known species of jellyfish. They can have a bell (body) with a diameter of over 7 feet and tentacles of 120 feet long.

Etymology
Cyanea – Greek κυάνεος = ‘blue in color’
capillata – Greek = ‘having hair or thread like’

Creole wrasse – Clepticus parrae – are protogynous hermaphrodites; the largest fish in a group is a dominant breeding male, While smaller fish remain female. If the dominant male dies, the largest female changes sex.

Protogyny is the most common form of hermaphroditism in fish in nature. About 75% of the 500 known sequentially hermaphroditic fish species are protogynous.

Wrasses are always on the go during the day, but are the first to go to bed and the last to rise.

Etymology
Clepticus: Greek, kleptikos = ‘related to thieves’

Flying Fish Fact:
Flying fish can reach the height of four feet in the air, and glide distance of 655 ft before returning to the water.

The Exocoetidae are a family of marine fish in the order Beloniformes class Actinopterygii, known colloquially as flying fish. About 64 species. While they cannot fly in the same way as a bird does, flying fish can make powerful, self-propelled leaps out of water where their long wing-like fins enable gliding for considerable distances above the water’s surface. This uncommon ability is a natural defense mechanism to evade predators. The ‘Exocet’ missile is named after them, as variants are launched from underwater, and take a low trajectory, skimming the surface, before striking their prey.

Etymology
The term Exocoetidae is both the scientific name and the general name in Latin for a flying fish. The suffix -idae, common for indicating a family, follows the root of the Latin word exocoetus, a transliteration of the Ancient Greek name ἐξώκοιτος. This means literally “sleeping outside”, from ἔξω “outside” and κοῖτος “bed”, “resting place”, verb root κει- “to lie down” (not “untruth”), so named as flying fish were believed to leave the water to sleep ashore, or due to flying fish flying and thus stranding themselves in boats.

Orange cup coral – Tubastraea Coccinea –
belongs to a group of corals known as large-polyp stony corals. This non-reef building coral extends beautiful translucent tentacles at night. Tubastraea coccinea is heterotrophic and does not contain zooxanthellae in its tissues as many tropical corals do, allowing it to grow in complete darkness as long as it can capture enough food, namely plankton.

It is nice to see Tabastrea Coccinea in its natural environment. OCC has been introduced to all continents except Antarctica and is thought to compete with native benthic invertebrates for space and to compromise their communities. The reduction of native sponges and native corals could also have significant flow-on effects for entire ecosystems. OCC was introduced in the Caribbean in the late 1930’s or early 1940’s at Curaçao and/or Puerto Rico probably transported by fouled vessels, oil and gas platforms, artificial reef structures, or ballast waters.

Etymology
Tubus = tube; +astrea = Astrea – Astraea, daughter of Zeus and Themis, a goddess of justice named after the stars.
coccineus = Latin meaning ‘red like a berry’, scarlet.

Mollusc Fact: 80% of legal internationally traded conch is consumed in fritters and salads in North America. The Queen Conch – Lobatus gigas is an endangered species and has been protected by over-exploitation by C.I.T.E.S.

Update: Conch populations continue to fall even in areas that are protected.
Full Story Here
A more dire story is here National Geographic 

Etymology
Lobatus – Greek lobus -‘hull, husk, pod, lobe’
gigas – Greek γίγας,- ‘giant’ , referring to the large size of this snail compared with almost all other gastropod molluscs.

Director of science and policy for the Bahamas National Trust, believes there may be some pushback against any conch regulations. “We’re not used to regulations or enforcements,” she told National Geographic. She believes that since the conch industry is the sole source of income for many Bahamians, any restrictions may be met with a degree of resistance.

Shelly Cant-Woodside