WHAT ARE THESE?

  

 We found some very interesting items on the beach both yesterday, Tuesday, and today.

 In the first picture you will see little white strips that at first glance look like pieces of string.  But we saw this all along the two mile stretch of beach that we walked.  All basically the same size and color.  In the book, Florida's Living Beaches by Blair and Dawn Witherington, page 124, there is a picture identifying these as Plumed worm tubes. Plumed worms live within soda-straw-sized tubes (above) that project from the sand near the low-tide line.
 

One of our walkers questioned what this grass was.  She saw it growing on items on the beach.  Karen told us that it was not seaweed, but a colonial animal called a bryoan.  You can find more information on a link that Karen provided at
http://www.exoticsquide.org/bugulaneritina

To the left and at the bottom we found what looked like at first glance a snake.  But when we took a closer look we  noticed the vertebrae.  This we do not know as Karen was not with us on Tuesday.  Also, there was only a partial (?)

 

Finding so many items on the beach that I know nothing about makes me realize that there is a whole other world out there that most of us know very little about.