Category: fish and marine creatures

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 5, 2025 • 8:15 am

Send in your photos, please!

Today mathematician Abby Thompson from UC Davis graces us with tidepool pictures from California. Her captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

A few more photos from November tidepools in Northern California:

Subfamily Syllinae (family Syllidae)I like the red eyes on the worms in this family:

Heptacarpus sitchensis (Red-banded transparent shrimp):

Oligocottus snyderi (fluffy sculpin)  This is one of the tidepool fish that gets transfixed by a flashlight:

A close-up of the fluffy sculpin’s eye:

There are two species of worms in this photo.   One I’ve posted before is the feathery one, from the family Sabellidae.  The other is possibly some species of ribbon worm.  I like the photo because it looks kind-of balletic:

Aeolidia loui (nudibranch) Those two small black dots may be eye spots, I’m not sure. There are two much fainter spots further forward and farther apart which are also contenders.   They have primitive eyes, not usually very visible, which are believed only to distinguish light and dark:

Fissurellidea bimaculata (Two-spotted keyhole limpet) The “keyhole” is the hole in the top of the animal.   There’s a small shell surrounding the hole.  The shell is always much smaller than the body in this species, but in this one the shell is entirely covered by the mantle:

Ophiothrix spiculata (Western spiny brittle star):

Genus Littorina (periwinkle) There are several species of periwinkles in the high intertidal zone. I’m not sure which this is, but he posed nicely:

Sunset over the Point Reyes peninsula:

The first picture was taken through a microscope on an iphone and the last was also with an iphone.   For the rest I used an Olympus TG-7, in microscope mode, with a lot of extra lights.  I got some help with IDs from inaturalist.

Readers’ wildlife photos

April 1, 2025 • 8:15 am

It’s SHARK DAY!  Today’s shark photos come from Owen Jones, Professor of Law AND Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University. Owen’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

In February 2025, a friend and I joined a week-long live-aboard trip to a patch of Atlantic Ocean about 20 miles north of the Bahamas.  The purpose was to scuba dive among Tiger Sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier), so named because of they typically have dark stripes down the body.  Because the dive guides were bringing the sharks in close with chum, our main task was to neither act like nor look like dead fish.  (Which is why our bare skin, except around the lips, was all covered in dark neoprene – and also why we would actively turn to confront incoming sharks, as a display of vitality and all around non-dead-edness.)

Tiger Sharks, which can grow to approximately 17 feet, and weigh up to 2,000 pounds, have the widest diet of all sharks.  And their especially saw-capable teeth enable them to cut through sea turtles in a way that other sharks can’t.

On one hand, Tiger Sharks are #2, after only Great White Sharks, in recorded fatal attacks on humans.  On the other hand, the absolute number of attacks is quite small.  And Tiger Sharks only rarely attack divers.

At a different location, we had the hoped-for pleasure of seeing Great Hammerheads (Sphyrna mokarran).  They grow to approximately 14 feet and 1200 pounds.  They are the largest of the hammerhead species, and are considered critically endangered.  They are generally shy, and are not considered a major threat to humans.

Your correspondent is on the right in these last two shots.

Sharks like these are absolutely magnificent creatures.  Powerful, nimble, and well-adapted (at least to a world before industrial-scale shark-finning).

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 18, 2024 • 8:15 am

Today we have some underwater photos from reader Peter Klaver. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

My friends and I did 5 days of scuba diving from San Pedro in Belize. The coral reefs there are beautiful and are home to many animals.

The large animals we saw most often were nurse sharks (Ginglymostoma cirratum):

They are quite tame and if we spotted them lying on the sea floor, we could move in quite close to them:

The other type of sharks we saw were reef sharks:

There were lobsters:

And turtles. I’m not 100% sure, but I thin this is a green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas):

There were rays of wildly varying size. This was a larger one:

And there were these almost entirely white fish whose name I don’t know:

Readers’ wildlife photos

February 18, 2024 • 8:15 am

Bob Woolley of Asheville, NC, sent photos he took of a biological marvel: a ray in a nearby aquarium that’s pregnant although it didn’t mate! He sent the paragraph below:

“Charlotte” is a round ray in an aquarium in Hendersonville, NC, who was recently found to be pregnant by parthenogenesis—the first documented case for her species. See this site.   Hendersonville is the next city south of Asheville, where I live, so yesterday I drove down there to see her. They seem to be taking very good care of her, with a clean, well-aerated tank–and they’re even preparing a special tank for her babies when they’re born. I thought you might like to feature some photos of this very special girl. You can easily see her “baby bump”; she’s not nearly as flat as most of her kind. In fact, that’s what prompted her human staff to do an ultrasound to see what was going on.

The Associated Press also has the story:

Charlotte, a rust-colored stingray the size of a serving platter, has spent much of her life gliding around the confines of a storefront aquarium in North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains.

She’s 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) from her natural habitat under the waves off southern California. And she hasn’t shared a tank of water with a male of her species in at least eight years.

And yet nature has found a way, the aquarium’s owner said: The stingray is pregnant with as many as four pups and could give birth in the next two weeks.

“Here’s our girl saying, ’Hey, Happy Valentine’s Day! Let’s have some pups!” said Brenda Ramer, executive director of the Aquarium and Shark Lab on Main Street in downtown Hendersonville.

An expert on the stingrays said it would have been impossible for Charlotte to have mated with one of the five small sharks that share her tank, despite news reports suggesting that was the case after Ramer joked about a possible interspecies hookup.

. . . .Its biggest lesson now is on the process of parthenogenesis: a type of asexual reproduction in which offspring develop from unfertilized eggs, meaning there is no genetic contribution by a male.

The mostly rare phenomenon can occur in some insects, fish, amphibians, birds and reptiles, but not mammals. Documented examples have included California condors, Komodo dragons and yellow-bellied water snakes.

Kady Lyons, a research scientist at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta who is not involved with the North Carolina aquarium, said Charlotte’s pregnancy is the only documented example she’s aware of for this species, round stingrays.

The pregnancy (yes, it’s developing babies in there, not just eggs), probably resulted from fusion of two of the four cells produced by meiosis, or gamete production. Usually only one of the four cells becomes an egg, which then fuses with a male’s sperm to produce the zygote. But if one of the four cells fuses with another, it’s possible to get an embryo that’s diploid, having the normal two sets of chromosomes,. all from mom.  Since different chromosomes assort into the four cells during meiosis, the offspring will not be clones of the mother, or of each other.  And this phenomenon has been seen in other sharks, skates and rays, but not this species.

I think they should name the offspring variants of “Jesus” or “Christ” since they were produced without copulation.

Go here to read more about the round stingray (Urobatis halleri), which is in the class Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fish) along with the sharks, skates, and other rays.  Now here are Bob’s photos:

Note that Charlotte isn’t flat (they’re about the size of a dinner plate), but has a big lump towards her rear: the sign of a pregnancy.

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 6, 2020 • 8:00 am

During the pandemonium surrounding the entry of Honey and Dorothy’s broods into Botany Pond at the beginning of May, reader David Campbell sent me some wildlife pictures. And, as sometimes happens, I forgot to put them in the “readers’ wildlife” folder. He reminded me, and, with apologies, here are some late photos. David’s captions are indented:

Descriptions follow.  The Cannon Spring photo [last one] is not the highest quality but the situation was so unique that I thought some of your readers would be interested.

Dog Puke Slime Mold (Fuligo septica) A plasmodial slime mold that frequently occurs on mulch around plants after heavy rains.  The gross factor made it a big hit with my students when it appeared in the ornamental plantings outside my classroom.  It has no odor.  I am waiting for someone to come up with a Hairball Slime Mold.

Sailfin Catfish, Pterygoplichthys sp. Photographed in Silver Glen Springs in the Ocala National Forest of Florida.  Sailfins are exotic invasives that I have seen in a lot of springs in the St. Johns River basin.  Two species of Pterygoplichthys are found in Florida and frequent hybridization makes identification to species difficult.  Sailfin catfish are edible but they are encased in a hard, bony armor so cleaning them is difficult.  Some people simply cook them “in the shell” and peel them apart.

Blue Crab (Callinectes sapidus).  Blue crabs are anadromous, occurring in both fresh and salt water.  This one was photographed about 15 feet below the surface at the mouth of a freshwater spring in the Ocala National Forest.

Florida Gar (Lepisosteus platyrhincus) Gars look intimidating but are not aggressive toward swimmers.  This meter long fish swam over to examine me and then went back under nearby overhanging vegetation to do what gar seem to spend most of their time doing, sitting motionless in the water column.

Green Fly Orchid (Epidendrum magnoliae).  A native epiphytic orchid that is found as far north as North Carolina.  Different plants bloom at different times of the year, sometimes as late as December in Florida.  The flowers are quite small and easily overlooked but worth the effort to find.

Sidewinder (Crotalus cerastes).  Photographed in Arizona.  This is one of the smaller rattlesnakes and this individual was typically nervous and aggressive.  The right infrared sensing pit is visible forward of the eye.  Like many other pit vipers, sidewinders hunt at night and use infrared radiation from homeothermic prey in the final localization stage of hunting.

Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus).  Two photos of a chrysalis, the pupa of this familiar butterfly.  These photo were taken three days after pupation.  The first photo was taken using conventional front lighting.  Clearly visible in the “skin” of the pupa are the outlines of wings, antenna, respiratory spiracles, and abdominal segmentation.  The second photo, taken during the same session, shows the chrysalis backlit.  Notice that the lower two thirds of the pupa is translucent with little or no visible structure.  Small clusters of cells are already organizing development of major butterfly organs and tissues from the products of broken down larval tissues.

Unicorn Caterpillar Moth (Schizura unicornis).  This is one of the more unusual Notodontidae caterpillars and was found feeding on an antique rose in the garden.  I moved it to a less valuable Cherokee rose where it continued feeding.  The adult is a nondescript little moth with a 25-35 cm wingspan.

Cannon Springs, Ocklawaha River, Florida.  This is a grab shot of something that is only visible for a month or two every three to four years.  Back in the 1960s the Army Corps of Engineers conceived and began construction on a barge canal connecting the Gulf of Mexico with the Atlantic Ocean, cutting across the Florida peninsula around the same latitude as Ocala.  One of the most beautiful rivers in Florida, the Ocklawaha was dammed to provide a wider and deeper channel for barges using the canal.  The resulting reservoir covered more than a dozen freshwater springs including several large ones.  President Nixon halted the canal construction before it could be finished but the dam remains and attempts to dismantle it and begin restoring the river have failed due to political resistance.

Every three to four years the Corps draws down the water level in the reservoir and, for a few weeks, several of the “lost” springs reappear.  Cannon is one of them.  I had planned on snorkeling here to photograph the fish and spring but I was the only human within miles and I never swim alone, especially when there is a five foot alligator sunning on the bank.  This photo was taken by holding the camera underwater as I floated nearby.  The larger of the two spring basins is in the background including the two vents where water flows out fast enough to keep the limestone clear of debris.  Also visible are several species of fish including lake chubsucker (Erimyzon sucetta), largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides), chain pickerel (Esox niger), and bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus).  The spring is now submerged beneath four additional feet of murky brown water and won’t be visible again until at least 2023.

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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.

Readers’ wildlife photos

February 5, 2019 • 7:30 am

Reader Carl Sufit sent us some nice underwater photos, and I hope we’ll have more from him and others in the future. His notes are indented:

After reading your notes from Hawaii, with various underwater images, I felt it was time to send you some of mine. Underwater photography is even harder than surface photography, and I find there are usually better photographers on most trips/boats I’m on (but they don’t send you any images!).  Anyway, I’d just about finished weeding through pix from my last trip, with some minor editing (all I’m capable of) when it was time to head off for the next one.

I’m relying on google to find Latin names. Comments on animal behavior are anecdotal and based on personal experience for the most part.

Last fall I visited Cayman Brac (one of the 2 smaller islands) for the first time, although I’d been to Little Cayman 20+ years ago, and Grand Cayman about 15 years ago.  My overall impression was that the reefs were in pretty good shape, with minimal/no coral “bleaching” and good fish life despite the scourge of invasive Lionfish.

Regarding the coral, I’ve read that Elkhorn, Acropora palmata, and its close relative Staghorn corals, are considered endangered and could be a marker of overall coral reef health.  There were some good areas of Elkhorn (as well as some destroyed by storms, as they grow in fairly shallow water):

Lionfish, Pterois volitans or P.miles:

On most dives, there were one or more Nassau Groupers, Epinephelus striatus, hanging around, and even coming toward the divers.  They didn’t seem to be waiting for us to scare up snacks (although I’ve seen that in the past on night dives, when our lights illuminated potential prey), and in fact appeared to want to be petted or stroked.  Why?  Helping clean them? (They often go to “cleaning stations” where tiny fish will pick through their mouths or scales, presumably for parasites.)  Or do they just enjoy it?   I was reluctant to take part, because, hey, you’re not supposed to touch the wildlife, but sometimes they were insistent.  Most were 2-4 ft. in length.

The Giant Barrel Sponges, Xestospongia muta, were impressive. Wikipedia says they can live thousands of years, and seeing some that were 6 ft/2 meters long, I can believe it.  (Homo sapiens aqualungis and vase sponge, Niphates digitalis? in background):

We were able to see what most divers love, sea turtles and octopus. Hawksbill, Eretmochelys imbricata (I think, or could it be a Green Sea Turtle??):

This octopus, presumably a Caribbean Reef Octopus, Octopus briareus, was out in the open in broad daylight, somewhat unusual, as they’re mostly nocturnal hunters and should be wary of lurking groupers, for whom they’d be a good meal. Their rapid color changes are quite impressive.

And as you liked the humuhumu in Hawaii, here’s one of its Caribbean cousins, a Queen Triggerfish, Balistes vetula: