On Shooting Fish

As an update to last week's post, I'm back on solid foods again, so that little crisis has officially passed.

Secondly, it's photo time again! I've spent the last few days on an assortment of scuba diving expeditions with my friend Ollie, so here's the first batch:


Mustard Hill Coral with Sea Fans


This is a juvenile Yellowtail Damselfish, sans yellow tail (that will come when the fish gets older). You can also see the tips of the spines of a Diadema urchin, close relative to the urchins I researched in Moorea.


At this point you've seen a few pictures of coral on this blog, right? Well you may have noticed that in all of the photos, the coral has looked quite hard and rocky. I know I've promised that coral is an animal and that it is related to sea anemones and jellies, but there's been little to no visual evidence of this... until now. Behold the products of Monday's night dive:




These pictures are both of the same kind of coral seen in the daytime photo above. Obviously they're a little more interesting at night. You can definitely see the physical resemblance to sea anemones, and the idea that these guys actively catch plankton is probably a little more believable.


This is a Balloonfish, a type of pufferfish - note the spines.


This is a Yellowline Arrow Crab that I saw crawling around one of the coral heads. To give you a sense of scale, the central body (tip of the long snout to its rear, not including legs) is about 1.5 inches. Being so spindly, this is obviously not the kind of crab you'll see on the Winchester-Swann menu.