Photo Adventures with Curiosity and Learning

This was mostly a sad, but in retrospect interesting, snorkel. There is much disease among the coral- maybe heat stress because the water is quite warm (need to get a thermometer to take next visit). But the temperature is much warmer than usual and from what I've read, the incidence of heat-stress responses and/or disease is much greater with higher temperatures.

Dying staghorn coral - Acropora cervicornis. All the photos are approximately geo-tagged - the gps was in the boat. Copy the image and look at the EXIF data

Bleaching of the table coral, Acropora cytherea

Quite sick Echinopora lamellosa

A school of fish feeding on something

Dead giant clam

Symbiotic relationship - Goby (perhaps Amblyeleotris japonica left) and pistol shrimp (?) (right). This is an interesting symbiotic relationship. The shrimp digs a burrow and share it with one or more Goby. Around sunrise the goby exit the burrow while the prawn does housekeeping - reopening the entrance if it collapsed during the night, and general cleanup. Then at sunset, the goby retreats to the burrow for rest and resovery while the prawn remains outside.

Two Goby serving guard duty for the prawn (inside the burrow). The Gobies also inhabit the burrow. Thus the entrance is Goby-sized instead of prawn sized

A shrimp aka prawn (crawfish) and his/her Goby guards

Another view of the Gobies and the entrance to their burrow

Out comes the prawn, cleaning the interior of the burrow

More house cleaning

House cleaning seems continuous

Prawn and Goby, guarding the entrance to their burrow

Need to identify this

Need to identify what is in the middle of the Acropora

Acropora with what appears to be something similar to white band disease

A response to heat-stress?

Need to identify this

Echinopora lamellosa - not healthy while to the right, it seems that the Acropora is healthy

Need to identify this

Honeycomb coral

Goniastrea (Honeycomb coral) with some white pox-like regions. Should have been closer

Giant clam

Closer

White band disease?

Need to identify this

Dead giant clam

Live giant clam

A blue giant clam

Heat stress?

Need to identify this

Giant clam

Maybe white band disease?

This was interesting and I don't know what it is

Finding Nemo

Anemone, Heteractis magnifica, and clown fish, Amphiprion ocellaris

The basement membrane of the anemone

? - no obvious white band

These appear different from the white banded bleached regions

Jumari - smiling as usual

White band disease

C. Frank Starmer

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