Underwater Variety Pack
I spent the day wrestling a herd of piggish computers in the mud-hole of DHCP and DNS problems. It’s fixed now, but I feel all stinky from the smell of fear (you IT guys know what I’m talking about – when nobody at the office smiles at you UNTIL YOU MAKE IT WORK AGAIN). Please, somebody, anybody . . . take my job!
So, I’ll relax for a few minutes and show you some fishy stuff.
There are lots of pretty starfish. But, there are few large pretty starfish. This is one of them. Behold Choriaster granulatus:
The specimen above was about 25cm across.
This blue giant is a Hump Headed Parrotfish (Bulbometopon muricatum):
It’s very difficult to get close to them. This was an exceedingly lucky shot. I swam as fast as I could to get close to it quickly as it glided along slowly. Suddenly, it turned, possibly to get a better look at me. I snapped. The big blue fellow hustled away down the slope and was out of sight in a couple of seconds. They eat coral. We sometimes see big groups (up to maybe 20) swimming around chomping on the hard coral. The front of the head is very bony and the teeth are like giant concrete dentures.
This floppy thing is a Magnificent Anemone (Heteractis magnifica). It has become detached by the surge of the waves on the top of the reef. It’s not a problem for the creature. When the waves settle down, it will spread out and reattach itself. If you click to enlarge you can see the little sucker thingies on the underside that fix themselves to the rocks. There are two Clark’s Anemonefish (Amphiprion clarkii) living in this anemone. I’ve featured many kinds of Anemonefish here on Madang – Ples Bilong Mi.
Finally, we have this shy horror, the Giant Moray Eel (Gymnothorax javanicus).
I love to see the look on a diver’s face when he first sees one of these. It’s really too funny for words.
So, I won’t try.
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[...] to the camera. More fun with Clark’s Anemonefish here (orange variation), here, here, here, here, and [...]
[...] found this favourite of our starfish (Choriaster granulatus) much deeper than it would normally be. I don’t know what it was doing [...]
[...] with the naked eye in natural light: Compare it with these images taken with available light here, here, here and here. This shot was too deep for available light. I had no choice but to use [...]