Today we’re looking at coral pictures (mostly). But first I want to tell you about the most beautiful screen saver on the planet. Understand, that’s just one man’s opinion. It developed as an homage to Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.  You can find it here. You have to sign up for an account, but there’s no money involved. It does require an Internet connection occasionally to give the full effect of evolvement, but it works fine without one. Here’s a screen shot of the home page. If you like to fool around with screen savers, give this one a shot.Now, on to the coral and whatever.

Wouldn’t you know that the first one up is a species that I can’t find. I tried Googling “cup coral” which is the obvious name for this, but I couldn’t find anything like it. My invertebrates book is of no help. If you know the genus and species of this thing, please leave a comment:It is about six or seven centimetres in diameter.

I am pretty sure about the identification of this coral (Acropora cerealis): It is one of the most common species here. It is very delicate. A brush of a fin can knock off a huge chunk.

This one is quite beautiful when the sun is shining down through the water. It is a species of the Montipora  genus:It has many tubeworms embedded in it. None of them came out to play.

This is another very pretty coral (Pachyseris speciosa).  Both this and the one above are massive. They are often over two metres across:Sometimes what is growing on, in or near the coral is just as interesting. Here Sea Squirts (Atriolum robustum)  grow surrounded by Porites  coral:Well, they obviously don’t grow on the coral, but on a bit of dead coral that is embedded in the Porites. 

I’m a bit of a fan of Sea Squirts. This one you’ve seen several times before. You can enter ‘molle’ in the search box to see previous posts. This one is Didemnum molle.  It has a nice coral, which I think is Goniastrea australensis  in the background:

The shading on the molle  is hard to get right.

Here’s another molle  with several species of coral in the background:

The molle  is about five centimetres across. You can also see a couple of Dascyllus reticulatus  in the background.

Did I mention that I’ve never been bored on a dive?

Related posts:

1. The Coral Corral I snapped all of these lovely coral species on one dive at Magic Passage. I could show you a dozen more, but you'd simply get bored....
2. More Canon G10 Underwater Goodness The great underwater hunt continues with the trusty Canon G10 at my side. How beautiful can something called a tube worm be? Find out here....
3. The Secrets of Leper Island Leper Island doesn't really have any secrets, except that there were never any lepers there. However, the surrounding reefs are rich beyond imagination....
4. Sky – Water I know that I show probably more sunrises than any other web site on the planet. No, wait, I’m sure there must be a “Just Sunrises” web site somewhere. Uh, strike that. I just Googled “just sunrises” and didn’t find any sites with that title. I did find a nice...
5. More Freaky Underwater Stuff More images of freaky stuff from Magic Passage near Madang, Papua New Guinea...
6. Coral All Around Coral watchers are lurking around my journal. I guess I'll toss them a bone. Maybe someone can help me with identifications. Too many of them look the same!...
7. Grass and Water I was standing out in the front yard this morning watching the sun rise up steadily, much too bright for good sunrise shots, and I looked down at my feet. The warm wine light of the fat, yellow orb was casting a very curious glow on the vegetation and shallow...

This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 08:00 and is filed under Under the Sea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.