Beach-combing

I could spend the rest of my life beach-combing.
You never know what will turn up. Previous discoveries have included an enormous leatherback turtle and a piece of whale vertebrae, although, admittedly, neither of these was in the New York Bight/Hudson River estuary system region. This small fish was. I found it, quite desiccated, on Plumb Beach, which is unfortunately cut off from the rest of Brooklyn by the Bay Shore Howlway, making it difficult to get to on foot/public transportation, but not impossible.

This is a northern pipefish, Syngnathus fuscus. Related to the sea horses. This is one of those species of fish where the males have a brood pouch, into which the female deposits her eggs for fertilization and incubation.
As stated, you never know what you’ll find. The same beach had this evidence of sharp and sophisticated urbanity, although it could just as easily have come from a ship, since that’s how we got a lot of our rats to begin with. Check out those choppers! Rodents are characterized by their continuously growing incisors, which necessitates constant gnawing to keep them manageable.