Images tagged "chagos"

Tiny (finger size) Redmarbled Lizardfish (Synodus rubromarmoratus) snapped up an even tinier blue damselfish.
Yellow Dot Guard Crab (Trapezia lutea) in branching Pocillopora coral exposing a clutch of eggs under her abdominal flap.
Anderson Mayfield photographing a pale branch of the Cauliflower coral, Pocillopora verrucosa, that he is about to take a small sample from for later analysis which may lead to an answer as to why this portion of the colony had lost their algal symbionts and bleached.
Detail of organgish pink gorginian sea fan showing tiny orange polyps scattered along the network of branches.
Pair of Splendid Soldierfish (Myripristis botche) displaying large eyes and bold colors and markings.
Pair of Two-banded Anemonefish (Amphiprion bicinctus) in a Bubble-tip Anemone (Entacmaea quadricolor).
Bladelike plates of the Blue Coral (Heliopora coerulea) form a mazelike structure.
Detail of the school of Humpback Snapper (Lutjanus gibbus).
Foliose plates of Echinopora coral form a spiraled pattern when viewed from above.
Water level view of Middle Brother Islands taken at the surface while waiting to be picked up by the dive boat.
Large school of Humpback Snapper (Lutjanus gibbus) swim over large table acroporids along the edge of a drop-off.
Large table acroporids and branching pocilloporids covered this site.
I found this Magnificent Sea Anemone (Heteractis magnifica) in its contracted state, balled-up with most of its tentacles tucked inside. The larger Two-banded Anemonefish (Amphiprion bicinctus) moved away from the anemone every time I came close for a photo rather than tucking itself inside and hiding within the tentacles as usual. It took me 10 minutes and more than two dozen photos to get this but I did get a bonus of a pair of juveniles to add to the family photo.
Lauren Valentino operates a pneumatic hand drill powered by a scuba tank to use a diamond tipped hole saw to extract sample corals from Porites lobata colonies. The cores are later sliced thinly and imaged with a CAT scanner to count the growth bands determining the growth rate of the colony.
A reef slope covered with cascading foliose colonies of Echinopora coral.
Large school of Yellowback Fusilier (Caesio xanthonota) that were visible from the surface.
A Spotted Eagle Ray (Aetobatus narinari) is pursued by a small remora.
Camera in hand, Anderson Mayfield swims over a reef with high coral cover including branching corals and table acroporids.
Large parrotfishes like this terminal phase Redlip Parrotfish (Scarus rubroviolaceus) can often be heard scraping dead sections of the reef to feed upon the turf algae and cyanobacteria growing there.
Blades of the Blue Coral (Heliopora coerulea) were packed so tightly that they covered virtually 100% of the reef.

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