Some pics from last week when the weather was good. The pools are golden brown at the moment (especially in the sun) with wire weed, thong weed and kelp dominating and mainly pinkish harpoon weed on the bottom. There are many schools of pollack along with the occasional school of young mullet and sand smelt. (One sand smelt was not in very good shape so I could get very close to take a good look.) These pics are taken using natural light. Nothing too special but I just wanted to post a bit more this year!
Two entries back I posted photos of the Goby egg-eating seaslug Calma gobioophaga. Last week I was lucky enough to spot its cousin, Calma glaucoides, who is a bit less fussy and eats different types of fish eggs, as well as cephalopod eggs. I found it by turning over a rock whilst snorkeling in a very shallow (<50 cm!) pool. Next to a depleted patch of clingfish eggs, it was circling around, busily depositing eggs of its own. A fantastic surprise, and I really need to get on with recording such findings.
The sun is shining (most days) and the water has warmed up, so ideal conditions for a bit of snorkeling. I have been out at my usual spot in Falmouth (rockpools and kelp forest) and my local beach in Flushing (seagrass) (and yes, I really count myself lucky every time that l live here!). The last couple of times I have brought my son along, as he is now old enough (nine). He is a nature freak just like his dad, actually probably more so! I need to get him fins and a weight belt soon, but he has been doing fine in the water already.
The photos above and below illustrate the state of the rock pools at the moment: quite brownish with the Sargassum and Himanthalia growing everywhere. The red, pink and purple species have largely disappeared (apart from Harpoon weed) and there is quite a bit of green Ulva growing. The water teems with juvenile pollack in the rock pools and schools of sand eels a bit further out. Diving over sandy patches, you can see the latter species shooting out of the sand en masse. It is crazy how such a silvery pelagic fish can also burrow in the sand. I guess it does take its toll, as there are quite some dead ones to be seen too.
The Flushing snorkel site is very different, no (deep) rockpools, only a little bit of kelp but with a very healthy patch of seagrass. No catsharks or thornback rays when we went in, just the odd small sea bass. There are many small Snakelocks anemones on the seagrass. I used to think that it was mostly the purple form that did this but I now noticed that most were the green variety, so the morphs do not seem to differ in this respect after all. One anemone had ‘caught’ a crystal jellyfish (an Aequorea medusa). Not sure if it was in the process of being digested or just ‘stuck’.
I have played around with my new INON strobe, which works a lot better than my old strobe. I have ordered a second one for Wide Angle photos too….(as you can see there is quite some backscatter in the pic of the Shore Crab above). I will need to get back to some shore diving to make optimal use of two strobes, as I am too lousy a freediver to get the lighting and exposure right in one breath!
