Off topic, that's for sure! But it may be useful for people who want to get the critters out of their sand beds. The methods can be used on a smaller scale at home.
You should get tons of good critters if it's a rich area. When you collect put a plastic bag over the grass or sediment first. As you scoop/grab/shovel/name-your-method-of-choice the pods & worms will start crawling or swimming away. The plastic bag will keep at least some of them from escaping. When onshore I'd use a combination of methods. First, I'd gently break apart the roots of the grass so it's in little bits. Very SLOOOOWLY tear them apart and if there's worms you'll see their bodies stretching between the pieces. With practice you can get even the longest worms gently pulled out of the roots. I do this for the bigger stuff that's easy to see. Next comes 1 of 2 methods:
1) Put the material into a tall round container like a 5-gallon bucket or even better, a 40-gallon trash can. It needs to be narrow so a flat broad tub won't do. Fill it 2/3 or 3/4 with salt water. Wearing gloves, reach down to the bottom & swirl the water so its spinning around fast. Do this for a minute or so. The lightweight animals like worms & pods will be lifted up into the water. Quickly, lift the container (hope you're strong) & pour off the water through a sieve. Helps if you have another person to hold the sieve. Don't let the sediment at the bottom hit the sieve. Repeat this process several times and you'll get nearly all of the free animals.
2) Weak back? Get a sieve & 2 wash tubs. Sediment/grass goes into one tub with water, the other tub has only water. Some stuff will come out immediately & you can just scoop them up with a spoon or turkey baster. For the small stuff, put a handful of sediment into the sieve & wash it in the water-only tub. Submerge the sieve partway into the water; the top needs to be out of the water so the contents don't escape. Gently but rapidly shake the sieve. The silt & sand will fall into the tub leaving (hopefully) the animals behind. The smaller the mesh the smaller the animals you'll get but the mesh will clog up with silt so there's a lot of cleaning involved. The animals also end up covered with silt. Using the trash can-swirl method should result in nice clean animals in good shape.
Drive me crazy, please! I miss your id requests. There are never too many as long as there's pics to go along with them!
