Our shores are shared by creatures large and small. We pay more attention to those we can see easily but there are also many much smaller, yet no lesser, eking out their unseen lives. They are tiny, this is their world.
Marine midge (Pontomyia sp.) on favid coral. 1 mm long.
Amphipods in Bryopsis. 1-2 mm long. I wonder if they are feeding on some slug.
These tiny shrimps look different from the usual transparent color. 3 mm long.
Soft coral polyps (Alcyonacea). 1-3 mm across.
Transparent polyp. Wildly guessing it is a Cerianthid. 3-4 mm across.
Brittlestar in Bryopsis. 1+ mm diameter disk.
Brilliantly green shrimp in bryopsis. About 5-7 mm long.
Tubeworm. 5-7 mm across.
Tiny swimming anemone. Juvenile Boloceroides mcmurrichi? About 7-9 mm across.
The larger more commonly observed ones:
Corallimorphs. 1-3 cm diameter.
Sweetlips. 2.5 cm long. These fish mimic dead leaves in water and each seem to favor a particular small shallow depression in the sand. This one would not leave the depression even when the area is intruded upon.
Small black catfish. About 3 cm long.
Snapping shrimp. 4+ cm long.
The giants:
Ornate leaf slug (Elysia ornata). 6 cm long.
Hairy crabs (Pilumnidae). Carapace 4 cm across.
Floral egg crab (Atergatis floridus). Carapace 5 cm across.
Head-stripe goby (Amblygobius stethophthalmus). 8 cm long.
Shy glass peacock anemone (cerianthid). 8-10 cm tentacle spread.
I think this fish is a perchlet. About 8 cm long.
Filefish. About 10 cm long.
Acanthozoon flatworm. Over 10 cm long.
Seahorse (Hippocampus comes) on a sponge spotted by Kok Sheng. About 7 cm long excluding the tail. There is a smaller seahorse on the sponge as well in the photo, camouflaged as a ring of detritus.
The smaller seahorse.
The titans:
Very long ribbon worm (Nemertea). No idea how long this one is but definitely longer than 20 cm.
Phymanthus anemone. 4 cm diameter.
Larger Phymanthus. 10 diameter.
Mushroom coral (Fungiidae). 10 cm diameter.
Octopus. Tentacle spread stretched out over 50cm. This octopus is larger than the usual smaller more commonly seen size.
It also seemed to be probing an octopus of a more typical size (top left) with one of its tentacles.
Favid coral polyps. Coral colonies can grow fairly large, covering boulders larger than 60 cm across. Possibly no theoretical limit to how large a colony can grow.
2 comments:
As usual....amazing shots!
Thanks!
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