Today we went up to Wongat Island to do The Green Dragon B-25 Mitchell bomber and The Henry Leith. The bomber went fine. I got some nice shots which I’ll be showing soon. However, when we went to do The Henry Leith, I brilliantly decided to anchor the boat at the beach so that the ladies could snorkel while Hendrick and I did the wreck. Than meant that I we had to dive off of the beach and I had to remember where the wreck was. I’ve done it many times before, but years ago.

Of course, I couldn’t find it. It’s only twenty metres down, but the water was too dirty so see more than about ten. The bottom where the wreck lies is at twenty metres, so we followed that contour in the area where I thought it was. After fifteen minutes, we gave up and came up to the shallow reef to shoot some pictures. This was my second dive on a big 80 tank. I ended up with 110 minutes. I was using my gills most of the time.

This is a cute little starfish missing only one leg. That’s pretty good by small starfish standards. This one is about five or six centimetres across. I’d say that about half of the starfish that I see are missing at least one leg:I think that it’s a Linckia multifora, but I’m not sure. It doesn’t look quite right.

However, what happens to the leg, if the fish which bit it off doesn’t like the taste? Well, we simply grow a whole new starfish from the leg. Some people call them arms, I call them legs, since we don’t walk on our arms, do we? Here on this severed Linckia multifora leg, you can see four tiny new legs growing out of the severed end:This is a pretty cute trick. Many organisms can do this. Medical researchers are busting their guts trying to find a way to mimic this behaviour in humans. The reason is obvious. Whoever solves the problem first will become the richest person on the planet.

Here is an absolutely lovely young Electric Swallowtail nudibranch (Chelidonura electra): Older specimens develop a lemon yellow edge around the edges.

This particularly nice Divericate Tree Coral (Dendronephthya roxasia) caught my eye:It’t quite lovely and I certainly appreciated the pleasure of seeing it.

However, this is my choice of the day for the shot which pleases me most:The little Glass Shrimp (Periclimenes holthuisi) is about as big as your thumbnail. He has several buddies swimming around him.

They are a nightmare to photograph. They are very small and don’t like the camera up close. They never stop moving, hoping around from place to place and waving their little pincers. Flash photography is useless; you have to use available light. Finally, they are nearly invisible in the first place! You can not see their bodies, only the spots.

It’s like playing “connect the dots”.

Related posts:

1. Warship Panorama, Blondes and Other Stuff Are blondes more or less intellegent than others? I think not. They do earn more money and marry higher earning men. Anyway, that's the newspaper version....
2. Waterspout! On a Sunday when I decided to work instead of going to Blueblood, my old mate Trevor got a shot of a waterspout. I've been waiting for 30 years to see one!...
3. Muddy Bottom Yesterday, I had a boatload of fun seekers, but no divers except me. So I took them to my favourite spot at Pig Island. In case you’re wondering, here is how it looks from where we were anchored on a sandy bottom: Since I was the only one diving, I...
4. All the Colours of the Sea I'll not show you ALL of the colours of the sea, but a fair number of them from this dive at Planet Rock near Madang, Papua New Guinea....
5. Light and Shadow – Two Views of Beauty I could have Photoshopped out Genevieve's hair standing on end, but decided not to. We sometimes look a little odd underwater. It adds to the charm of the image....
6. Start With Fish! For the first post of a new year with what else can I begin? It has to be fish! However, let us begin with things NOT fish. How about a spider?...
7. Banana Bana Bo Bana If you've never tasted a banana ripened on the tree until its skin has split, you have never tasted a banana in the condition which God intended it to be eaten....

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 8th, 2010 at 08:58 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.