My Grandmother’s house was full of treasures. I was allowed to play with some of them. Going to Grandma’s was like getting out of jail. I could “express myself” ’til the cows came home. While other boys were playing with dump trucks and fire engines (small ones, of course) my favorite toys were a pen knife and a magnifying glass. You don’t need much imagination to understand that Grandma’s yard was a dangerous place for insects and other small organisms.

I can’t say how many ants were mercilessly torched by that magnifying glass. Many fat grasshoppers fell under the knife and were dissected for the sake of knowledge. I honestly don’t know if insects suffer while undergoing such treatment; it can’t be much fun for them. I’d like to think that I’ve made amends as an adult. Since I stopped hunting (with a gun) years ago, I’ve made it a point to harm nothing. I’ve grown to enjoy the tickley sensation of a spider navigating the forest on my arm. My motto is, if it doesn’t try to hurt me, I won’t try to hurt it. Mosquitoes beware!

All that claptrap was just to get to this. Little things are fun to examine, if you can get them big enough to see. For example:  here is a slightly larger-than-life image of a colony of the Organ Pipe Coral (Tubipora musica):Each individual polyp is about half of the diameter of a pencil eraser.

Now, let’s blow them up to see how they are made:Hmmm . . . quite a revelation. All of that detail is hidden from our knowledge without the aid of something more powerful than the Mark I Eyeball. We wouldn’t know about the delicate fringes around the ‘petals’ and the oddly shaped yellow doohicky in the centre. We can only wonder what they are for, but now we can at least see them. Knowing a little about invertebrates, I can tell you that form follows function. Everything you see there has to do with eating, excreting or making more polyps. That’s about it for coral. It’s a simple life. No big brain to get bored. No brain at all!

Here is another coral (Pachyseris speciosa)  that is mildly amusing, in a very wrinkly way, but not likely to inspire a sonnet:Oh, wrinkly, wrinkly coral. Your colour unlike sorrel. Not thought to be immoral. blah blah blah – you get the picture. It’s a long reach.

But wait! If you blow it up . . .Now it’s getting more interesting. What the heck is  that? You could write something creepy about that. It’s like a million wiry snakes all making love to each other (where did that  come from?). Anyway, it’s more interesting.

Here is another specimen of Pachyseris speciosa  with Seriatopora caliendrum  towering over it:

I’ll finish up with one of my favourite little things, the lovely Christmas Tree Worm (Spirobranchus giganteus):Pure white ones, such as this are not common. There are about a zillion base colours and a gozillion ways to mix them up. The little parasols come in pairs, as they are both appendages of the same individual worm.

To annoy you further, I cheerfully ripped this section from Wikipedia so that you may be fully informed.

The worm is aptly named; Both its common and Latin names refer to the two, chromatically-hued spiral structures that are most commonly what is seen of the worm by divers. In actuality, these multicolored spirals are merely the worm’s highly-derived respiratory structures.

S. giganteus  appears like most tube-building polychaetes. It has a tubular, segmented body lined with chaeta, small appendages that aids the worm with its mobility. As it does not move outside its tube, this worm does not have any specialized appendages for movement or swimming.

The worm’s most distinct features are the two “crowns” that are shaped like Christmas-trees. These “crowns” are actually highly modified prostomial palps which are specialized mouth appendages of the worm. Each spiral is actually composed of feather-like tentacles called radioles, which are heavily ciliated which allows any prey that are trapped in them to be transported straight towards the worm’s mouth. While they are primarily feeding structures, S. giganteus  also uses its radioles for respiration. It is because of this that the structures are commonly called “gills”

Now, when Santa comes, you can engage him in a conversation that will daze and confuse him.

On Saturday, we motored up to Wongat Island  in our dive boat, Faded Glory.  There are two world-class dives there within a couple of hundred metres of each other. One is the B-25 Mitchell bomber, The Green Dragon.  The other is a scuttled cargo vessel, The Henry Leith.  Bob Halstead bought the wreck for K1.00 and sank it as a diving attraction. It’s beautifully preserved. I believe that a clever student could probably work up a Doctoral thesis in Marine Biology without ever leaving the thirty-four metre length of this beautiful ghost ship.

I have been stalking a critter for a good specimen shot for about ten years. It is very elusive and quite rare. Near Madang, The Henry Leith  is the only place that I can guarantee  that you might  see one. For now, I’ll call it the “Mystery Fish.” That’s because I want to see if anybody is paying attention. The first person to leave a comment with the correct common and taxonomic name of this fish, based only on this partial view, wins a prize. The prize is that you get to be first:

Yes, I’m cheap. What did you expect, a Rolex?

In the next couple of days, I’ll be showing you the shots that I’ve been trying to get for over ten years.

Here’s another difficult fish to photograph. It’s commonly known as a Trumpet Fish, but you can call it Aulostomus chinensis  if you like:They constantly try to hide from you in very curious ways. They assume odd positions. I was upside down with salt water gushing into my sinus cavities, nearly dying to sneeze, when I got this shot. UW photographers have to take risks for their prizes. You can see the railing of The Henry Leith  upside down at an odd angle. Possibly predators have difficulty matching memory-stored food images up with objects in the water if they are in unexpected configurations. That’s my utterly unscientific guess.

This is a lovely, snowflaky, starry coral which I am pretty sure is the Pipe Organ Coral (Tubipora musica). For once the taxonomic name makes sense, if you remember your High School Latin (yes, I am  that old):I said that I’m pretty sure about the identification. There are quite a few corals that have a similar appearance. I forgot to look at the base of this one, so I’m thinking it may possibly be some Anthelia  species, which are very variable.

And now, would you care to venture a guess as to what this is? I bet that most people would be able to identify this as the eyes of a stingray which is hiding just beneath the sand.  This is why they are troublesome to divers. You often cannot see it easily until you have already frightened it and it escapes. That’s when the stinger is most likely to get you.As I approached this one he began to rise up slowly in preparation for flight:A second after this shot, there was nothing left in the camera frame but swirling sand.

SITE NOTES: I’m hoping that you will find that Madang – Ples Bilong Mi  is loading much faster. I’ve reduced the eqo-stroking clutter in the side bar – the locations of our visitors and a visitor live feed. I’ve also dumped a few plugins that made calls to third-party sites and slowed things down. There are now seven pages on HOME instead of fifteen. I hope that this improves the experience for everyone. I’m also not bothering to link to every phrase or word on which I have posted before. I know that I’m supposed to do that to keep people from drifting off to some other site. However, for dedicated readers wanting to see what else I’ve written before on a given subject, use the Search box, or click on the title of the post that you want to read and you will get a “single” page with that post and up to seven related posts listed beneath. Remember also that you can “Click a Tag” in the sidebar to see all posts to which I have added that tag.