Wrapping up the magical ocean photos. Here we go!
A sweet spotted eel. Not scary like the moray demons with their extra set of throat-teeth.
And some moray eels. Creepy finger-biting-off creepers from Creepytown.
Mouthful of eggs. As someone who swallows regularly I would find this concerning as hell, but I guess you do what you have to do.
Puffer fish!
Another puffer fish!
Puffers and friends!
Get ready for a very pretty creature with an equally awesome name straight out of Harry Potter. Meet the Bristled Fire Worm.
Please enjoy… Lil Critter. We could not figure out what this little fella was. He has claws and eyes and antennae and that’s about all we could figure out.
Flounders! Did you know when they are born their eyes are on either side of their head but when the flounder picks a permanent side to lay on the eye underneath migrates to the top? NATURE! It’s real weird!
Glowing Fish. Cricket said he looked like he was lit from within.
Lobsters that are notoriously protective of their hidey-holes. They get very grumples when you get close. They will charge you.
Very important: Cricket went for a night dive (because I guess diving 80 feet below the surface during the day wasn’t terrifying enough) and saw a lobster out of its burrow trekking across the ocean floor which is a rare thing to see.
Dead piece of lobster face.
Okay. Now we begin with the shots that made me smack Cricket in the arm and say, “YOU SAW THAT??? FOR REALSIES??? My envy consumes me.” First, the nudibranch (pronounced “noo dih brank”). I’ve had strong feelings about nudibranches for many years, but I assumed I’d never see one in real life. They are sea slugs that come in a ton of varieties. Sometimes they have tufty protuberances on their backs, they’re the best. Here’s a collection of random shots I found on the internet. Type “nudibranch” into Google, click on images and fall deeply into the exquisite world of color and texture.
I know, right? Amazing. So when Cricket showed me a few different pictures and said, “I dunno what that is” I screamed, “YOU SAW A NUDIBRANCH IN REAL LIFE IN FRONT OF YOU.”
Shortly after the magic of the nudibranch, Cricket showed me a picture of, as he called it, “A shrimp in his hole.” Uhhhhh, that’s not a regular shrimp. That’s a MANTIS SHRIMP, THE KING OF SHRIMPS. They can see all the colors. They punch their prey at the speed of lightning, boiling the water around them. The Oatmeal did a whole long strip on the glory of the Mantis Shrimp. And Cricket saw one. I don’t know how to process this.
Finally, the group of squids. These were teens and they were travelling in a group that looked exactly like a group of battleships in a scifi movie. I christened them “The Squidron.” I would love someday to see a squidron in person. So marvelous. I would mess up all the squids trying to hug them.
A close-up of one squid’s chromatophores.
And that’s it. Pretty amazing stuff. Hope you screamed with glee as much as I did.