I sometimes enjoy musing that I have some smidgen of artistic talent. Not so. I can’t draw water. There are so many things that I would love to be able to do, but I’m simply too bone lazy to expend the effort. Man, I would love  to be able to play the piano. I’ve taken countless lessons, some recently, but I have no discipline to practice, therefore my keyboard skills suck swamp water. I’d also love to paint; it looks so easy! Alas, it’s beyond my reach. But, I can  Photoshop!

This nice sunrise shot seemed born to be a watercolour. So, I turned it into one in a couple of minutes:It’s so easy that it’s embarrassing. I suppose that Turner laboured for days to get something that looks roughly (very  roughly) like this.

Ah yes, were not here today to talk about art. A few days ago, I gave you Bite Me Red Fish featuring the Scarlet Soldierfish (Myripristis pralinia).  As I was mining the folder if images from that day, I came across a couple of more that are worth a peek. Here’s one of three of them crowded into the little passageway between the rocks where they were vainly attempting to hide from me:

It seems to be getting a little crowded in there.

Here is the interesting shot. There are some species of  creatures called isopods that parasitise fish. The one that you see here, Anilocra laticaudata,  specialises in Soldierfish:

I’ve shown you this before in this post. As I mention there, the males that wear an isopod have more luck breeding; the females seem to prefer them over unadorned mates. Well, that’s the strange world of fish for you.

Now I shall inflict upon you yet another image of  Christmas Tree Worms (Spirobranchus giganteus):If you think that there will be relief from Christmas Tree Worms in the near future, think again. Xmas is coming soon; you’ll be seeing more of thes curious little decorations.

Okay, okay, but what about the guttata? That’s another critter that you have seen here recently. That’s because it is a fish high on my list for exploitation. I have a few species which I am determined to photograph to the best of my ability with the gear that I own (New Canon G11 coming soon! Whoopee!). This is the very pretty fish the Spotted Shrimpgoby (Amblyeleotris guttata):
And, I think that the shot above is probably about as good as I can do with the Canon G10. It’s fun to take inexpensive gear such as the Canon G series underwater and run it ragged. It’s like squeezing a lemon hard to get the last drops of juice for that one last glass of lemonade.

I like squeezing lemons.

Sometimes it’s more difficult to think of what to title a post than it is to write it. Yesterday’s The Big Blue Finger is a case in point. Today’s title is even more illustrative. I have a bunch of stuff to show you. It has no theme. What can I call it. I’m getting tired of trying to incorporate the word ‘miscellanea’ into a title. There’s only so many ways to do it. So, Bite Me Red Fish. As you shall see, the red fish doesn’t bite and the bite marks have nothing to do with the red fish.

Okay, okay, I’m obviously rambling now. Let us proceed to an image that I should have deleted, but it’s the only picture that I have of a Solor Boxfish (Ostracion solorensis):It’s a shame it’s such a bad picture. It is very difficult to get close to them. This one was scurrying frantically to get out of sight when I saw it, so I just pointed the camera and snapped, not even knowing if I had focus or even if the fish was in the picture at all. When I got home and opened the image in Photoshop, I could see that I got a lot of smear from the very blurred image caught on the sensor while the shutter was open and one nice, sharp image of the fish when the flash went off, both on the same exposure. This is a problem that I can’t fix on the Canon G10, I think. There’s no way to make the shutter speed faster than 1/60 second when you have the flash turned on. So, you get a partially blurred image with a crisp flash capture over the top of it, so to speak.

Well, I’m sure that that explanation put a lot of people to sleep. How about some poo?You can now state proudly to your friends and neighbors that you know exactly what Sea Cucumber poo looks like. A surprising amount of it comes out of them. I guess it’s not so surprising when you consider that most of what they ingest is plain sand. You have to suck a lot of sand for a bit of nourishment.

I should call this one Death Takes Us All:This beautiful little bivalve has met its doom recently. There hasn’t even been time for much sediment to fill its empty shell. This shell is about 4cm long.

Now for the bite bit. Hard coral is . . . well, uh . . . hard!  You will know for certain the first time you bang your head on it. If you’re a photographer, it will happen sooner or later. However the marks you see here were not made by my pointy, pointy head:No, those marks are the result of normal parrotfish feeding habits. This coral is not as hard as cement, but pretty nearly so. Therefore, you can imagine how hard the teeth of a parrotfish must be. In this case it was a rather large one. The bite marks here are about six or seven cm long. Thank heavens that parrotfish are not inclined to include humans on their menu.

So much for the bite. How about the red fish? Well, in that contest, the Scarlet Soldierfish (Myripristis pralinia)  has little competition:I don’t know what is the origin of the common name, Soldierfish. They all have pretty much the same general form, including the big, big eyes for most of them.

It is interesting to me that, although I usually complain that using flash makes everything look redder than it does in nature, I have to say that it didn’t hurt the representation of this species. The overall shot is warmer that I would prefer, but the fish itself really is that red.

And, it doesn’t appear to be inclined to bite me.