Image of common fifteen-scaled worm

Description:

Tentative ID - could be 18? Not sure where to stop counting near the back end... :-) NOTE to iNat dock-foulers: Due to heavy rains, salinity in the SF Bay is presently at record lows, the lowest numbers since 1986. Presently salinity in Redwood City is between 15-13 psu (Practical Salinity Units). For comparison, the Bay is normally around 20-25 psu during the winter, and the coastal ocean is around 33 psu. Today at the dock, there was almost none of the normal 'mobile life' (mollusks, polychaetes, crustaceans, fish) -- these were the only three species for an hour of looking. The uniNatted sessile creatures (tunicates, hydroids, bivalves) looked awful as well. And of course everything was covered in silty gunk. One MSI staffer reported more dead leopard sharks washed ashore (and distressed sharks circling aimlessly). For their aquariums, MSI has stopped collecting on the outer coast and is attempting to acclimate their existing creatures to lower salinity levels (they pump in SF Bay water for their tanks). It will be interesting to see when/how the Bay recovers after the storms.