8 posts tagged “diving”

i had some trouble uploading about half of the dive pics the first time, so here are the rest.

jellyfish are crazy, crazy animals, for all that they have no brains.  they are cnidarians, closely related to corals, and most of them are about 95% water.  they drift, they pulse, they bump into things and get stuck or head off in another direction, and yet they also hunt, feed, and reproduce quite successfully.  some of them have blue or green zooxanthellae (symbiotic algae) living in their tissues, like corals.  seeing them in the water with you can be magical, or panic-inducing, or both.  seeing them on display in a tank, however, is mesmerizing.

so, there was a lot of very cool stuff on the leigh dive.  but best of all - far and away - were the two Octopus gibbsi we found hiding the the rocks.  the first was quite shy and seemed ok with being observed closely, but definitely didn't want any contact.  the second, however, got involved in a lively tug'o'war with proffered fingers, and eyed up a small crab as well.  here are the best stills of both beasts:

don't worry, the tattoo story is still in the works, but in the meantime, here are some very cool sponges we saw while diving in leigh harbour on saturday morning.  more pics will follow, and some videos - we found two octopuses to play with! - but i'll just share these first.   the 'common names' are completely made up (by me) so don't use them to, like, identify these things or anything.

to set the scene...

life has been full of fishy goodness recently. 

last weekend, the pebbles and i went diving up at tawharanui, near goat island marine reserve.  we were not expecting anything miraculous in the way of sealife encounters or visibility, since the northern part of the country had had heavy rains the week before.  but we thought we'd see what was around, and also play with the underwater camera. 

as it turned out, the vis was about 2m, so not great, but also (sadly) not the worst we've dived in.  in terms of fauna, we came across a large short-tailed stingray, Dasyatis brevicaudata (at extremely close range, since i was less than 2m away before i could see her), but i was too slow on the draw to get any good shots.  there were lots of nice sponges, a school of sweep (Scorpis lineolata), hordes of baby spotted wrasse (Notolabrus celidotus), and the occasional friendly adult spotted wrasse.

we also got to play with the scallops, and with the video function on the camera.  the microphone even works underwater, as you can tell from the darth-vader-like breathing noises. 

and here are a few goatfish (Upeneichthyes lineatus), the other most common sight for the day.  they're nibbling on a small cluster of broad squid eggs that have come loose from the nearby kelp and gotten partially buried in the muck on the bottom.  note the cool feelers on their chins.

but wait, there's more!  we have two new additions to the domestic aquatic scene as well.  having had bad luck with bettas, we were interested in finding some mid-to-upper-level-swimmers that are fun to watch, and the pebbles became fascinated by a tank of pearl gouramis (Trichogaster leeri) on a recent excursion to the fish store.  so we went home and read up on them, and they seemed ideal - omnivorous, hardy, peaceful, and captive-bred.  piscine perfection.  so we brought a pair home.