Readers’ wildlife photos

February 21, 2019 • 7:30 am

We have fishes, underwater invertebrates, and one birdie today. The underwater photographs come from reader Peter Klaver, whose notes are indented (readers with marine expertise might identify the squid and the last fish).

Here are some photos and links to video clips of underwater wildlife I saw while on a scuba diving trip off the coast of Myanmar. My knowledge of Latin names is not much better than the previous time my scuba diving photos and video appeared here, so hopefully readers can again fill out the gaps and correct mistakes in the species’ Latin names.
We saw quite a few cuttlefish. They were quite big, but it’s not the giant cuttlefish Sepia apama I think, which is exclusive to Australian waters. Would anyone know which kind this is?

We even saw them in bunches together, and there is a short 3.2 MB video clip of these three here.
Lion fish, Pterois volitans, are a common site in almost any tropical reef scuba diving trip:
Moray eels are also a common sight, and they come in many different varieties.
There is a 1.5 MB video clip of the darker kind in the photo below here.

Finally, here is some fish whose name I wouldn’t know in English. You might wonder if the photo is in grayscale, but it is actually in color, see the small striped yellow fish in the right bottom corner. The pattern on the fish is just almost perfectly monochrome.

And for the ornithophiles, reader Garry VanGelderen sent one photo, but with two birds:

Here is a pic of two Red-Bellied woodpeckers (Melanerpes carolinus). Male is upper one, female the lower one.

14 thoughts on “Readers’ wildlife photos”

  1. The underwater world is so enchanting. The cuttlefish move like liquid in liquid.

    Red-Bellies look almost identical at first glance.

  2. Love the sealife

    Love woodpeckers

    One day, might we see deep sea creatures? Exciting to think…

  3. I suspect the pufferfish is the Mbu pufferfish, Tetraodon Mbu.

    The cuttlefish is more difficult, since they can change colour and texture in the blink of an eye. I bet on the common cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis.
    It was always a great enigma why cuttlefish and other cephalopods signaled so colourfully, while only having one retinal pigment. It turns out they see colours by using chromatic aberration, not pigments with different absorbtion spectra, a completely different mechanism!

    1. What I find even more stunning is that they are so intelligent (well, I’m not in the know about cuttlefish, but thinking octopuses), while having no socialisation whatsoever. Their parents are dead when they are born and they are apparent loners. And yet they are highly intelligent.
      Is our model of the evolution of intelligence, based on social ‘intercourse’ more incomplete than we think?

      1. If you asked/paid Michio Kaku he’d give you a bullshit answer that sounded good. 🙂

        There’s a body of philosophers [& religious & new agers & Buddhists?] who think ‘mind’ is in some way a property of the universe, but that feels like an unsatisfying gap argument to me. I haven’t a clue.

  5. Every time I see a Lion Fish, I am reminded of a nature show from years ago where they reported a campaign to get people to eat them. Evidently, they are voracious predators of other reef fish and are threatening to take over entirely. They interviewed some diners who claimed that Lion Fish taste great. I would definitely try it. I wonder how their campaign is going?

    1. I don’t know too much about lion fish, but I do know they have a nasty sting, which I believe is due to poison. So don’t eat one whole.

      1. If I remember the program correctly, the poison problem is eliminated by removing the spines. The difficulty of catching and preparing lion fish was blamed for the lack of interest in eating them. The campaign had an educational component, showing fisherman how to safely catch them and chefs how to cook them.

  6. I’v done a fair amount of snorkeling but don’t think I’ve ever encountered a cuttlefish. There is, however, an extensive display about them at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. They are indeed fascinating creatures.

  7. I’ve been snorkeling and scubadiving for decades. Cuttlefish an octopuses are masters of camouflage, you probably saw a few ‘without seeing’ them. I saw many, but am sure I missed even more.

  8. Some googling revealed that the cuttlefish is probably the common or European cuttlefish: Sepia officinalis

    Thanks for the beautiful fish pics and the lovely woodpeckers. Do they have red-bellies? Looks like just a red head.

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