A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king...

I am working on confirming the identification of this flatworm, so I thought I'd just put a few worm pictures up along with it. This is a flatworm, or platyhelminth. Yes, that's the same group of flatworms that sometimes live in the digestive systems of land mammals, including us.

This flatworm may be Notoplana sanguinea, which may not be confirmed in the Sitka area at this time.

Update: The identification, according to Aaron Baldwin of Juneau, is correct. He was even kind enough to send me a beautiful picture of the same species, that he took right here in Sitka when he was a professor at SJ college. I will not post it in case he wants to control it.


This one is a nemertea, or ribbon worm. It's quite common I think, and is probably Tubulanus polymorphus.


This one is pretty and also very common. Allow me to introduce you to the tubeworm Eudistylia vancouveri. I just learned that the "feather duster" group of tubeworms is a subset of the polichaete worms. As always, I learn as I write.


Stay tuned for more glamorous critters!