This beautiful film “Seashore Oddities” is a William Harold Oliver Jr. Production in collaboration with Hopkins Marine Station and H.E. McMinn presented by Standard of California in 1942. The film is narrated by John Grover, and it educates on four categories of specimens found on Californian shorelines. Coelenterata hollow-bodied animals, Echinodermata spiny-skinned animals, Mollusca soft-bodied animals, and Arthropoda animals with Jointed Feet are explained with close-up footage of collected specimens in aquariums at the Hopkins Marine Station. (Note: portions of this film were likely used in the Rachel Carson film “The Sea Around Us”, which had a special thank you for William Oliver in the credits.)

An offshore oil drilling platform operated by Standard Oil Company of California, probably near Santa Barbara (00:06). Two men fishing on a speedboat next to the platform (00:20). Waves crashing over a rock (00:27). “Seashore Oddities” title banner (00:36). Credits (00:40). Views of the shoreline in the Monterey peninsula in California (00:52). Rocks from the shoreline are turned over (01:41) revealing sea life such as starfish attached to the rock (01:46). Specimen is collected from the sand and rocks of the shoreline and put into buckets (02:02). The first group of the specimen collected is titled “Coelenterata Hollow-Bodied Animals” (02:36). In this category are hydroids (02:41). A bell jellyfish (03:16). Anthozoa (Actinozoa) or flower animals (03:45). Sea anemone feeding of brine shrimp and small fish through their tentacles (04:17). The second group of the specimen collected is titled “Echinodermata Spiny-Skinned Animals” (05:23). Starfish, part of the Echinodermata kind (05:28). Views of a starfish squatting over a shellfish to tear it from the rock with its ‘suckers’ (07:44). Close-up footage of the starfish’ mouth (07:57). Serpent starfish (08:14). A brittle star (08:45). Sea urchins (09:09). A sand dollar, a species of flat sea urchins (09:52). Views of its underside covered in short spines (10:09). The third group of the specimen collected is titled “Mollusca Soft-Bodied Animals” (10:52). A sea hare, a marine gastropod of the family Aplysiidae (10:58). A nudibranch more commonly called sea slugs (11:36). Other colored nudibranchs (12:06). A Hopkins rose sea slug named after Timothy Hopkins, founder of the Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove (13:08). Other species of sea slugs (13:28) including the hermissenda opalescens (14:06). A stomach-footed animal known as limpets (15:31). An Abalone marine snail (16:23). A spiral shell gastropod (17:13). A chiton animal, a type of crawling mollusc similar to a Limpet, more commonly known as armored animals (18:05). Different colored chiton shells (18:35). An octopus – a head-foot animal or cephalopod (18:59). The fourth group of the specimen collected is titled “Arthropoda Animals with Jointed Feet” (19:22). A hermit crab (19:29). A shell-less hermit crab finding a new shell (19:53). Footage of a California shoreline (20:44). Waves crashing over rock formations (20:47). “The End” text overlay (21:13). Credits (21:15).

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