Text will be terse today, as I am swamped by work in the computer room. Everybody needs everything right now.  It’s not something that system administrators are not used to. It does get a little irritating when you’re also trying to roll out an entire new network at the same time.

Enough complaining. Let’s have some fish.

This cute little critter with the improbable beard is, of course, a Goatfish – what else would you call it? Specifically, it’s a Manybarred Goatfish (Parupeneus multifasciatus):

The whiskery things are used to find food. It digs around in the sand for a meal. As you watch, you can see the whiskers flying around like mad. It’s speculated that they are extremely sensitive to the electrical fields around living things. Spooky, eh? I wonder if weapons researchers are checking into this.

This little one has the delightful name of the Pink Anemonefish . How harmless does that sound? If you’re on more formal terms it’s (Amphiprion akallopisos):

Everybody knows that this is a Moray Eel (Gymnothorax javanicus).  What you may not  know is the it is the wrong colour.  This is another reason that I’m always whining about the use of flash for underwater photography. The eel looks nothing like this 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 flash.

Steven Goodheart sent several very nice nature shots, but I could not get any but this one to load properly. It’s worth a solo appearance. It is, as Californians will recognise, a Western Fence Lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis):

This is a particularly nice shot for identification and I like it because the composition is also very clean.

And now, because I never tire of seeing myself on the silver screen, I’ll show you this shot of me at Blueblood with our missing friend Heidi Majano:

As is usual with most keen photographers, we hardly ever get an image of ourselves that we really like. This one tickles me. Put “heidi” in the search box in the sidebar to see some of her great images.