Some Silver Steps Molluscs
Tag Archives: Silver Steps
The Crack pt. 1
Some more pics below (notice that in some another animal is lurking in the background!). Some species are easier to photograph than others, clingfish are very shy for instance. Anyway, there are some more ideas I have, for instance trying to capture multiple species in one frame and post about them in ‘The Crack pt2.’!
Fish of Silver Steps
Below photos of various smaller fish hiding in the rock cracks (click for names on the pictures).
Finally a favourite of mine: the Topknot (Zeugopterus punctatus). Not quite nailed the shot yet – maybe this year!
Scorpion Spider Crabs
Crustacean Crevice Dwellers
I have done a fair bit of diving at Silver Steps this year and it is high time to publish some of the photos I took there, starting with the Crustaceans that inhabit the cracks in the rocks. Most pics were taken with the macro-wide angle lens, which is not only suited because of its perspective, but also because it is long and thin and so can be poked into the crevices where these creatures lurk. Above, two Velvet Crabs Necora puber, which are abundant and feisty – I only noticed the small female in the photo afterwards! Below a European Lobster Homarus gammarus, also quite common and some of them are quite big. They usually shuffle out of their den quite menacingly only then to retreat again. Although impressive animals, it is hard to get an aesthetically pleasing shot out of them I find.
Next, the Squat Lobster Galathea strigosa, also a common, but quite shy species which is just as happy upside down as right side up. Also common are Brown (or Edible) Crabs Cancer pagurus, the individual here not in a crevice but in a piece of steel wreckage.
The other big, common Crustacean here occasionally perches on rock walls but usually is found roaming the seabed: the European Spider Crab (rebranded by local fishmongers as ‘Cornish King Crab’ – sounds more appetizing than something spiderlike) Maja squinado brachydactyla. Like the lobster, the behaviour of these guys is a mixture of bravado and fear. The weird lens allows me to get close, but as it lets in very little light, I am forced to use a high ISO and slow shutterspeed, making these images not the crispiest.
The final photo is technically not great, but I like it because it shows how a range of species apparently gets on quite well at close quarters. On the left, a Common Prawn Palaemon serratus, which can grow quite large and is actually really beautiful with its blue and yellow stripes. Right behind it is a Squat Lobster, with two Edible Crabs lurking in the background and an upside down male Connemara Clingfish Lepadogaster candolii – the next post will be about the fish of Silver Steps!
Black-faced Blennies
Dear reader, it has been a while! With the weather taking a turn for the worse, I thought it would be high time to start updating the blog again. I have taken more photos this year than ever before, and actually have dived my local shore site “Silver Steps” in Falmouth ‘to death’, so now have plenty of material. I’d thought I start with a post on one of my favourite fish, the Black-faced Blenny (Tripterygion delaisi). This is a beautiful little fish (a triple-fin blenny, not a ‘true’ blenny) that lives under rock overhangs, usually perched upside down. Breeding males are bright yellow with a black head and an electric blue edged dorsal fin, while females and males outside of the breeding season have a mottled brown-white coloration (which is equally beautiful testified by the pic on the top right). These fish (especially the females) are skittish and also require a bit of contortion to photograph under the overhangs but it is more than worth it! Below a photo-dump of fish shots taken with my 60mm macro lens and a combination of that lens and a superduper macro-wide-angle wetlens (details of which I am bound to bore you with in coming posts!).
Inachus
This seems like a familiar way to start a blog post but here I go again: ‘the weather has been terrible lately and I have not been in the water!’. March used to be my favourite time for snorkeling because the seaweeds look at their best, but the last three years it has been windy and wet, surely because of climate change…
To keep the blog going (a bit), I have dug out some images from a few dives last year featuring Inachus spider crabs. There are three species, I. phalangium, I. dorsettensis and I. leptochirus, which can be told apart by the arrangement of tubercules on their carapace, but these are often obscured by epiphyte growth, and so I am keeping it to Inachus sp. All species are associated with Snakelocks Anemone (Anemonia viridis) hosts. The photo above is taken using a weird ‘wide angle macro’ wetlens (INON UFL-M150 ZM80). This perspective always fascinated me but it is difficult to achieve. This lens does the job, although it is incredibly ‘soft’, especially around the edges. The close focusing also makes it difficult to direct the strobe light on the subject. So there is a tradeoff between getting the surroundings in view and sharpness. Below first some sharper shots using my 60mm macrolens, followed by some macro wide angle shots (they happen to be each of the different Anemonia colour morph):
I will leave you with the following interesting bit on the biology of these crabs by Diesel (Ethology, 1986):
I. phalangium females are site-constant, and live in the protection of one anemone or group. Males travel frequently between anemones harbouring females due to spawn; they copulate and guard the females until spawning, after which the male leaves again. A male operates in a patrol area containing 3-8 anemone groups and up to 8 females, visiting each female in turn repeatedly just before it is due to spawn. Patrol areas of different males may overlap, with resulting competition to fertilize a female’s next brood. Large males have higher reproductive success than small ones. Females live up to 8 months after the moult of puberty and hatch up to six broods, and males live up to 7 months as adults. A male could fertilize a calculated 26,000 eggs, whilst a female’s reproductive potential is ca. 4,200 eggs. Mortality risks are higher for males than for females, probably because of increased predation while leaving the protection of anemones in order to visit females. Males learn the positions of anemones harbouring females in their patrol areas, and when these are due to spawn. This allows a male to travel with a target and arrive punctually to fertilize the next brood due in his circuit. I. phalangium is the first marine invertebrate reported to use a “schedule” of localities and times for visiting prespawning females. In this way males minimize searching time and mortality risk, and maximize the number of broods fertilized.
Variable Blenny
During an otherwise uneventful macro-dive at Silver Steps this week I looked under a small rock overhang around 8 meters deep and noticed an unusual little fish. At first glance it resembled a Tompot Blenny (see pic of a showboating individual below), only darker, more skittish and, upon closer inspection, with much smaller tentacles on top of the head. I knew this must be a Variable (or Ringneck) Blenny, Parablennius pilicornis, as we’d seen many of them on holiday on the Basque coast this summer. It is a southerly species that was first recorded in Britain in 2007 but is increasingly spotted. Not a first for Cornwall, but there are still few observations and so I have recorded it on iNaturalist (making it available for later inclusion on the NBN Atlas, the UK’s largest repository of publicly available biodiversity data). Another warmer water species joining our shores due to climate change…
Back to Silver Steps
I recently bought (2ndhand) scuba gear and did a refresher dive; with the nice weather this week it was high time to get back under the waves and take some photos! I dived Thu/Fri/Sat at the main local shoredive site ‘Silver Steps‘. I went in by myself, but with a maximum depth of around 10 meters and good conditions this is not risky. The dives did not disappoint, the viz was excellent! Although I spotted cuttlefish every dive, I still opted for the macro lens, as I suspected I could not get great shots of them with my fisheye lens at 1.5 meter distance (I might have been wrong!). Instead of heading out to sea as some divers do, I always stick to the gullies by the rocks, diving below the kelp to see what happens beneath the rocky overhangs. There are three usual suspects hiding there, each with a very different personality. First, Leopard Spotted Gobies (Thorogobius ephippiatus) inhabit cracks in the rocks and are quite shy:
Third, Black-face Blennies (which are not true blennies but triple fins) that only ever live under overhangs, usually head-down. I did not see males in breeding colours (black face, yellow body) but this colour form is even prettier I think:
When inspecting the rock walls carpeted in sponges, seasquirts, algae, worms and other things, I kept my eyes out for nudibranchs. Apart from a tiny crested aeolis, I spotted a good number of Discodoris rosi, busy mating and laying eggs. This species has only been observed in the UK for a decade or so but the population now is booming, with many reports coming in from all over Cornwall:
All in all a great enjoyable three dives! Silvery schools of sandeels and sprat/herring, many wrasse, cuttlefish, small and very big lobsters and a greater pipefish were also spotted. Unfortunately the weather has made a turn for the worse this week, however, there are still a few diveable months left this year…
Silver Steps Diving V
Yet another solo dive (I know, I know, not ideal) this Thursday morning before the easterlies are kicking in. Actually, the water was already choppier than I expected, but for macro photography the viz is not as important. I did not get ‘the’ shot but it was a nice dive all around. I discovered a little swim-under and saw lobster, rock lobster (craw fish) and a huuuuge conger eel. I was focusing on a little tunicate when I looked up and saw it looking back at me from not very far away at all. Its head was as big as mine. I slowly swam backwards, thinking of this encounter…..overall they do seem to be aggressive towards people though, and with my fisheye lens this could have been a really good shot. This later happened again, this time a smaller individual but still sizable. I did not stick my macro lens up its nose but grabbed a halfhearted shot with a passing by Twospot goby almost in focus to give an idea: 
Some macro shots: again a Twin fan worm Bispira volutacornis and a new one for me, a big bright red Protula tubularia. It would be nice to get some abstract close-ups but these are excellent living motion-detectors so it is difficult. There are some amazing colours under the rock overhangs and I would like to try some more abstract photos such as this Spiny starfish or this Didemnun colonial seasquirt and other encrusting animals (and plants). No diving/snorkelling this weekend because of the wind, but glad I could put a couple of dives in these past weeks, and I will make an effort to go a lot more weather permitting!
An Bollenessor 