Category: marine and aquatic life

Readers’ wildlife photos

January 2, 2025 • 8:15 am

Today we have a second batch of underwater photos from reader Peter Klaver (first batch here). Today we have underwater wildlife (corals). Peter’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Here is the second batch of photos from scuba diving around San Pedro, Belize earlier this month.

Apart from many animals, the coral reefs there also have a rich abundance of underwater vegetation.

Most of the sea floor in the reefs is covered with various kinds of soft corals.

There are also some hard corals:

. . . including brain corals:

. . .And there are various cylindrical or tubular species whose names I don’t know.

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 2, 2024 • 8:30 am

Today’s photos are from California tidepools and were taken by UC Davis math professor Abigail Thompson, a recognized “hero of intellectual freedom.” Abby’s notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

September-October tidepools (Northern California).

September and October tides are not as extreme as the tides of midsummer, and by mid-October the lowest tides occur after sunset, which altogether makes finding creatures and taking pictures a bit more challenging.  As usual I got help with some of the IDs from people on inaturalist.

Phyllocomus hiltoni: this Doctor-Suessian marine worm washed up on the beach in a clump of eelgrass.    It was tiny; the photo is through a microscope.     I already thought it was amazing, but then (see the next picture) as a bonus it also sprouted tentacles:

Phyllocomus hiltoni with frills!

Porychthis notatus: these tiny fish showed up when I turned over a rock. They were very small, I assume newly-hatched:

Porychthis notatus: close-up:

Anthopleura sola (starburst anemone), one of the more spectacular sea anemones:

Phragmatopoma californica (California sandcastle worm): These worms often live in groups and form large conglomerations of the tubes they live in (the “sandcastles”).    The black shell-like thing on the left is the worm’s operculum, like a lid to close off the top of the tube when the worm withdraws.  The next picture is a close-up of the operculum:

Operculum close-up:

Triopha maculata: nudibranch; this one looks like he’s eating the pink bryozoan, but he may just be passing over it, I’m not sure what this species eats (nudibranchs are very picky eaters):

Epiactis prolifera (brooding anemone: probably): there are a few species of Epiactis sea anemones along the California coast; prolifera is the most common:

Halosydna brevisetosa: Eighteen-scaled worm, found on the underside of a rock.   There are 18 pairs of scales, with a close-up of them in the next picture.

Close-up of scales:

Low tide on this day was about an hour after sunset, which is a lovely time to be out on the beach:

Camera info:  Mostly Olympus TG-7, in microscope mode, pictures taken from above the water.  The first picture was taken with my iphone through the eyepiece of a microscope.

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 17, 2024 • 8:15 am

Today’s batch of marine-life photos comes from math professor Abigail Thompson at UC Davis. We’ve met her before (in 2018) when she was widely and publicly demonized for simply writing a piece criticizing diversity statements (see this post, which is missing many links). But today we see her photographic skills with pictures of nudibranchs and other marine invertebrates. As she says, “I spend a lot of time up to my knees in cold water.”  Abby’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them. And remember that nudibranchs are molluscs.

These are all from the same 1-mile stretch of Northern California coastline during the past year.   The pictures are mostly  taken from above the water, at low tide.  Most are of sea-slugs, beautiful animals with a terrible (common) name (although nudibranch sounds a bit better), with some ID help from inaturalist.   Lots more pictures here or at inaturalist.

Ectopleura marina A hydroid, a (very small) animal that just stays put:

Acanthodoris rhodoceras, nudibranch:

Aeolidia loui, nudibranch:

Polycera atra, nudibranch:

Phidiana hiltoni, nudibranch:

Eurylepta californica, a species of marine flatworm:

Triopha catalinae, nudibranch:

Crassadoma gigantea,  actually, a not-very-big scallop.   The black dots are eyes:

Epactis handi, a fairly rare (and beautiful) anemone:

Doto kya (probably), nudibranch:

Equipment: One photo was with an iPhone through a microscope, but the rest were taken with an Olympus TG-6 or -7, the almost-indestructible tidepoolers favorite, with a sensational macro setting (I did manage to destroy the TG-6, but it took real effort).

Note: Three new photos added by readers’ request:

Coast-in-a-fog; that’s a deer in the middle.   They come down to the water at night (for salt?) so if you’re out very early in the morning you see them there:

View towards Pt. Reyes from the top of a ridge:

 I think those are pelicans on top of the rocks, at sunset:

A Dumbo octopus

June 17, 2023 • 2:19 pm

There are 17 species in the genus Grimpoteuthis, or “Dumbo octopus”, and you can see where the name comes from in the short video below. It was just posted a few days ago (this species is in the deep ocean), and here are the YouTube notes:

Our Corps of Exploration spotted this absolutely adorable pale orange dumbo octopus surrounded by marine snow around 1,400 meters deep while diving on the summit of “Guyot 10” in the waters of the Pacific Remote Islands. Don’t let its Disney-like appearance fool you; these octopuses (Grimpoteuthis spp) are actually predators! They propel themselves through the water using those famous ear-shaped fins to find food, then gobble their prey up whole, feasting on a plethora of deep sea critters such as copepods, isopods, bristle worms, and amphipods. Learn more about this expedition funded by NOAA Ocean Exploration via the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute: https://nautiluslive.org/cruise/na149

And from Wikipedia:

The name “dumbo” originates from their resemblance to the title character of Disney‘s 1941 film Dumbo, having a prominent ear-like fin which extends from the mantle above each eye. There are 17 species recognized in the genus. Prey include crustaceans, bivalves, worms and copepods. The average life span of various Grimpoteuthis species is 3 to 5 years.

Here’s a shot of Dumbo (who could fly with his ears) from the original movie, and I’ve put the trailer below it”

From IMDb

Remember this?

 

Winners, 2022 underwater photography contest

February 5, 2023 • 1:10 pm

There are all kinds of photography contests, but this one, the Ocean Art Underwater Photo Contest, has produced some of the best images I’ve seen.  You can see the winners by going to the link in the previous sentence and scrolling down.

Alternatively, The Atlantic (click screenshot below) has a summary along with short narratives by the photographers.

I’ll show a few of my favorites; be sure to click on the photos to enlarge them.

Drifter. Honorable Mention, Nudibranchs. © Talia Greis / Ocean Art

Greis: “Almost every year, the coastal shores of Sydney, Australia, receive an influx of blue drifters (also referred to as the ‘Blue Fleet’), which consist of bluebottles, blue buttons, and the infamous Blue Dragon (more commonly referred to as the Glaucus). This magnificent critter is an organism that relies on the wind and ocean currents to carry it around, which sometimes results in heavy storms casting it ashore. The Glaucus is considered to be a type of pelagic nudibranch that devours bluebottles and stores their stinging agents as defense against predators.”

JAC: This is a nudibranch, a shell-less mollusc, Glaucus atlanticus.

Mobula Munkiana. Honorable Mention, Wide Angle. © Adam Martin / Ocean Art

Martin: ” aggregate in large schools off the coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico, each spring, during a period thought to be mating and pupping season. While motoring offshore for a week, our search was guided by breaching rays on the horizon. After many attempts to locate the rays and quietly enter the water, I was able to capture a clean image of this large school.”

JAC: The correct binomial is Mobula munkiana without a capital letter in the second word. It’s also know as the Munk’s devil ray.

Wunderpus. 2nd Place, Compact Macro. © Regie Casia / Ocean Art

Casia: “During a blackwater dive, shot at 25 meters deep over about 1,000 meters of water, we waited for the vertical migration of deep-water creatures.” Photographed in Janao Bay near Anilao, Philippines.

JAC: This appears to be Wunderpus photogenicus (what a great name!), a mimetic octopus.

The Eye. Honorable Mention, Macro. © Kat Zhou / Ocean Art

Zhou: “This photo depicts a close-up look at the eye of a nurse shark and was taken on a night dive off the coast of Bimini in the Bahamas.”

The Hunt. 2nd Place, Wide Angle. © Daniel Nicholson / Ocean Art

Nicholson: “A grey reef shark parts the tide of bait fish. In a very rare occurrence, a large shiver of sharks had herded this school of bait fish into the shallow passageways of the Ningaloo Reef in Australia. With the fish trapped here, nearly a hundred sharks spent hours in a feeding frenzy.”

h/t: Barry

An exposition of Māori “ways of knowing” in marine biology and conservation: a taxpayer-funded project riddled with theology, spirituality, and lore

September 23, 2022 • 12:00 pm

This set of eleven postcards (or “flashcards,” as I call them), come from the “Sustainable Seas Initiative“, a government-supported program designed to apply Mātauranga Māori (MM) or Māori ways of knowing, to marine biology, including both understanding the sea and conserving it and its inhabitants. Apparently, in contrast to the claims of the paper I discussed yesterday, you can indeed separate areas of empirical endeavor and discuss them separately, for here we are discussing marine biology. I have only looked over the 155-page report on what is to be done, but what I’ve seen isn’t heartening. But absent having read it carefully (yet), I’ll just stick to showing you the “summary” cards accompanying the report. These explain the various aspects of MM that are part of this endeavor.

You can download the 11 colorful cards here, and here’s why they’re supposed to be useful (their text indented)

These summary cards are introduction tools only, not universal definitions.

Iwi, hapū and whānau knowledge systems are place and people specific. We caution the use of quotes or analysis out of context, without respect for those ancestors who provided it, and in isolation of reference to existing tangata whenua (tangata moana) sources and authorities. These summaries are effectively ‘background reading’ in preparation for deeper discussions.

We hope these cards are useful to iwi, hapū and whānau in the pursuit of their own knowledge retention, expansion and transmission to future generations.

We also anticipate these summaries will be useful to marine related decision makers of all kinds and at all levels. We encourage people to read the Hui-te-ana-nui report as an opportunity to better understand a Mātauranga led way of working with the Tangaroa ecosystem.

. . .The report also:

  • Examines mātauranga associated with the marine environment
  • Indexes the reference sources of this varied mātauranga
  • Signposts where to go for further detail

Understanding, developing and retaining mātauranga and kaitiakitanga specific to the marine environment is a vital component of ecosystem-based management (EBM) for Aotearoa. For example, it is crucial for developing spiritual, cultural, social, environmental and economic practices, indicators and metrics that are relevant to our Aotearoa context.

Here’s a description of the cards. Noe the “metaphysical elements” that are included in a “system of knowledge”. It is this mixture of the natural with the supernatural, of practical knowledge with untestable assertions about gods and connections, that tells us that MM is not in the least equivalent to modern science.

The rest of the material below comes from the 11 cards. Click on any screenshot to enlarge it.

MM is like Buddhism in emphasizing that everything is interconnected—in MM, however, though the via common descent of everything from two creators (sky and earth). We are even related to rocks in this way!

The creation and a Whanaungatanga genealogy:

Note that Mātauranga, the knowledge itself, includes how it is known as well as what is known. This drags the metaphysical (gods), as well as lore and legend, into the realm of the empirical:

Here’s a list of what the Mātauranga includes. Note that besides language, it comprises “proverbs,” Spiritual and values”, and “stories and legends.” No, this is not “knowledge.” Note that there are other unspecified things included as well.

Included is Kaitiaki, or guardianship. There’s a substantial supernatural aspect here requiring propitiatory rituals:

And “taonga,” the values and practices to sustain the marine environment. Note the denigration of a “narrow physical view” at the end and the intrusion of the spiritual throughout:

Now I ask you, is this something that can be considered “knowledge about the ocean”: a plan of action and principles to conserve the ocean environment? Yes, there may be conservation practices here, but they’re mixed up with a ton of spiritual stuff that is totally unproven (and likely wrong)—things passed down from ancestors that would not be part of modern marine conservation at all.

Do I “respect” this practice? No more than I respect Catholicism, Hinduism, Islam, and any other way of life that contains spiritual elements that have no basis in fact. It is this mixture of the physical and the metaphysical that makes the teaching of MM in classrooms as a “way of knowing” equivalent to modern science such a ludicrous proposal.

Yes, the Māori can have their superstitions, gods, and creation myths, but what is happening here is that they are forcing them onto the New Zealand populace, who not only funds this stuff through taxes but is forced to adhere to its philosophy and practices for fear of being called racist. As Hitchens said, the religious (and yes, much of this is religion) can have their toys, but they can’t force the rest of us to play with their toys.

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 27, 2022 • 8:00 am

Don’t forget to send your photos in! There’s a prize! (You get to show them off to a lot of people).

Today’s batch comes from Daniel Shoskes, whose captions and IDs are indented. Click on the photos to enlarge them.

It’s been a few years since my last submission so I thought I would share a few photos from a recent trip to Belize. Brown Iguana, Toucan (the national bird of Belize), Howler monkeys, nurse sharks and a Roseate Spoonbill. [JAC: not in order, but I trust you won’t be confused.]