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22e Rendez-vous annuel hivernal des Challengers, 3 au 5 février 2012
22nd Annual Challenger Winter Rendezvous
February 3-5, 2012
Porcelain Crab over an anemone. Was taken in Sipadan (Malaysia).
At the moment it's my most Interesting shot.
For the past 40 years, black tip sharks in Bora Bora lagoon have been fed every morning. A great experience to feed them, then feed the sting rays and the millions of "nemo" fish!!!
Shot in 5 feet of water with an olympus 5050 in a waterproof case.
I shot this photo while diving the back side of Santa Cruz Island, CA (Herminssenda Crassicoris)
#2 most interesting photo Jan. 9 2006
Tunicate, also known as urochordata, tunicata (and by the common names of urochordates, sea squirts, and sea pork[1]) is a subphylum of a group of underwater saclike filter feeders with incurrent and excurrent siphons, that are members of the phylum Chordata. Most tunicates feed by filtering sea water through pharyngeal slits, but some are sub-marine predators such as the Megalodicopia hians. Like other chordates, tunicates have a notochord during their early development, but lack myomeric segmentation throughout the body and tail as adults. Tunicates lack the kidney-like metanephridial organs, and the original coelom body-cavity develops into a pericardial cavity and gonads. Except for the pharynx, heart and gonads, the organs are enclosed in a membrane called an epicardium, which is surrounded by the jelly-like mesenchyme. Tunicates begin life in a mobile larval stage that resembles a tadpole, later developing into a barrel-like, sedentary adult form.
While most tunicates live on the ocean floor, salps, doliolids, and pyrosomes live above in the pelagic zone as adults.
Tunicates apparently evolved in the early Cambrian period, beginning c 540 million years ago. Despite their simple appearance, tunicates are closely related to vertebrates, which include fish and all land animals with bones.
I saw at least 4 different sea turtles on the trip to Maui. This was my favourite because of how we met. It snuck up right behind me and scared the sh*t out of me, then proceeded to float next to me for quite some time, letting me take practice photos of it and a short movie (just added!). Thank you Fuji for your beautiful camera and underwater enclosure.
You can now license this photo on Getty Images through my Back in the Pack Flickr account.
The Christmas tree worm, Spirobranchus giganteus, is a Christmas tree-shaped serpulid tube-dwelling worm with magnificent twin spirals of plumes used for feeding and respiration. This cone-shaped worm is one of the most widely recognized sedentary polychaete worms. They come in many colors including orange, yellow, blue, and white and, though they are small with an average 3.8 cm in span, they are easily spotted due to their shape, beauty, and color. The colorful plumes, or tentacles, are used for passive feeding on suspended food particles and plankton in the water. The plumes are also used for respiration. Though the plumes are visible, most of the worm is anchored in its burrow that it bores into live calcareous coral. Christmas tree worms are very sensitive to disturbances and will rapidly retract into the burrow at the slightest touch or passing shadow. They typically re-emerge a minute later, very slowly, to test the water before fully extending their plumes.
I froze with fear when I saw the savage beast approach. It's eyes fixed on my every move. I Stood tall and faced the evil menace, I squeezed off this shot!!! and then!!!!! The Sea World announcer said " Feeding time is in 10 minutes" (OK so it was in a big tank!!!)
Tube anemones or Tube-dwelling anemones look very similar to sea anemones, but belong to an entirely different subclass of anthozoans. They are solitary, living buried in soft sediments. Tube anemones live and can withdraw into tubes, which are made of secreted mucus and threads of nematocyst like organelles.
Tube-dwelling anemones or ceriantharians look very similar to sea anemones but belong to an entirely different subclass of anthozoans. They are solitary, living buried in soft sediments. Tube anemones live inside and can withdraw into tubes, which are composed of a fibrous material made from secreted mucus and threads of nematocyst-like organelles known as ptychocysts. Ceriantharians were formerly classified in the taxon Ceriantipatharia along with the black corals but have since been moved to their own subclass, Ceriantharia.
Ceriantharians have a crown of tentacles that are composed of two whorls of distinctly different sized tentacles. The outer whorl consists of large tentacles that extend outwards. These tentacles taper to points and are mostly used in food capture and defence. The smaller inner tentacles are held more erect than the larger lateral tentacles and are used for food manipulation and ingestion.
A few species such as Anactinia pelagica are pelagic and are not attached to the bottom; instead, they have a gas chamber within the pedal disc, allowing them to float upside down near the surface of the water.
Taken @ Blijdorp Zoo Rotterdam, Holland.
UPDATE:
2nd Place Winner 13th Contest: Deep Blue Sea
www.flickr.com/groups/flowercontests/discuss/721575942314...
Interview
www.flickr.com/groups/flowercontests/discuss/721575942379...
I built this for the Lego Ideas Moments in Space contest. The winning entry has the chance to be made into an official Lego set that would be available as a gift with purchase. If you like it, please vote for it. If you really like it, please comment on the Ideas page and share the link to help this mini rover get more votes. ideas.lego.com/challenges/1b817aba-3990-4e6d-a17f-7a59a94...
Thank you and sorry for the self promotion.
(one of five photos)
Fire corals are colonial marine organisms that look rather like real coral. However they are technically not corals; they are actually more closely related to jellyfish and other stinging anemones. They are members of the phylum Cnidaria, class Hydrozoa, order Capitata, family Milleporidae.
Fire Corals at FujiFire corals have a bright yellow-green and brown skeletal covering and are widely distributed in tropical and subtropical waters. They appear in small brush-like growths on rocks and coral. Divers often mistake fire coral for seaweed, and accidental contact is common. Upon contact, an intense pain can be felt that can last from two days to two weeks. The very small nematocysts on fire corals contain tentacles that protrude from numerous surface pores (similar to Jelly Fish stings). In addition, fire corals have a sharp, calcified external skeleton that can scrape the skin.
Fire coral has several common growth forms; these include branching, plate and encrusting. Branching adopts a calcerious structure which branches off, to rounded finger-like tips. Plate adopts a shape similar to that of the smaller non-sheet lettuce corals; thereforeerect, thin sheets, which group together to form a colony. The latter; "encrusting", is where the fire coral forms on the calcerious structure of other coral or gorgonian structures.
The worm is aptly named; Both its common and Latin names refer to the two, chromatically-hued spiral structures that are most commonly what is seen of the worm by divers. In actuality, these multicolored spirals are merely the worm's highly-derived respiratory structures.
S. giganteus appears like most tube-building polychaetes. It has a tubular, segmented body lined with chaeta, small appendages that aids the worm with its mobility. As it does not move outside its tube, this worm does not have any specialized appendages for movement or swimming.
The worms's most distinct features are the two "crowns" that are shaped like Christmas-trees. These "crowns" are actually highly modified prostomial palps which are specialized mouth appendages of the worm. Each spiral is actually composed of feather-like tentacles called radioles, which are heavily ciliated which allows any prey that are trapped in them to be transported straight towards the worm's mouth. While they are primarily feeding structures, S. giganteus also uses its radioles for respiration. It is because of this that the structures are commonly called "gills".
One of the major differences between Christmas-tree worms and the closely-related sabellid fan worms is that the latter do not have any specialized body structures to plug the holes of their tubes with when they withdraw into them. S. giganteus, like the other members of its family possess a modified radiole, usually called the operculum, that it uses to secure its hole when withdrawn into its tube.
As an annelid, S. giganteus possesses a complete digestive system. It has a well-developed closed circulatory system. Like other annelids, these worms possess well-developed nervous systems with a central brain and many supporting ganglia, including pedal ganglia, which are unique to the Polychaeta. Like other polychaetes, S. giganteus excrete with fully-developed nephridia. When they reproduce, they simply shed their gametes straight into the water where the eggs (and spermatozoa) will become part of the zooplankton and can be carried by the currents.
Clavelina picta is a colonial, filter feeding tunicate that can be found in Florida, the Bahamas and the Caribbean. It is abundant in Bermuda as well. C. picta creates a constant water flow pumping into the brachial basket where mucous, secreted by the endostyle, filters out organisms. This species uses asexual reproduction through budding and broods its larvae. Larvae are tadpole-like and mobile containing a notochord and nerve cord. When the larvae settle, they loose these structures and become sessile. Clavepictines have been isolated from C. picta and are used to slow growth in human solid tumor lines and leukemia in rodents.
Habitat
Clavelina Picta is found in tropical and subtropical areas such as Florida, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean (Rupert and Fox 1988). This sessile species is quite abundant in Bermuda. It can be found growing in colonies of hundreds of individuals often on gorgonians, black corals, and sponges (Fenner online). As seen in Clavelina lepadiformis, C. Picta can also be found in harbors and in mangroves (de Caralt et. al 2002). It is found in relatively shallow waters from below the low tide mark to about 50 meters.
The sponges or poriferans' (from Latin porus "pore" and ferre "to bear") are animals of the phylum Porifera. Their bodies consist of jelly-like mesohyl sandwiched between two thin layers of cells. While all animals have unspecialized cells that can transform into specialized cells, sponges are unique in having some specialized cells that can transform into other types, often migrating between the main cell layers and the mesohyl in the process. Sponges do not have nervous, digestive or circulatory systems. Instead most rely on maintaining a constant water flow through their bodies to obtain food and oxygen and to remove wastes, and the shapes of their bodies are adapted to maximize the efficiency of the water flow. All are sessile aquatic animals and, although there are freshwater species, the great majority are marine (salt water) species, ranging from tidal zones to depths exceeding 8,800 metres (5.5 mi). While most of the approximately 9,000 known species feed on bacteria and other food particles in the water, some host photosynthesizing micro-organisms as endosymbionts and these alliances often produce more food and oxygen than they consume. A few species of sponge that live in food-poor environments have become carnivores that prey mainly on small crustaceans.
Sponges are known for regenerating from fragments that are broken off, although this only works if the fragments include the right types of cells. A few species reproduce by budding. When conditions deteriorate, for example as temperatures drop, many freshwater species and a few marine ones produce gemmules, "survival pods" of unspecialized cells that remain dormant until conditions improve and then either form completely new sponges or re-colonize the skeletons of their parents. However most sponges use sexual reproduction, releasing sperm cells into the water. In viviparous species the cells that capture most of the adults' food capture the sperm cells but, instead of digesting them, transport them to ova in the parent's mesohyl. The fertilized eggs begin development within the parent and the larvae are released to swim off in search of places to settle. In oviparous species both sperm and egg cells are released into the water and fertilisation and development take place outside the parent's bodies.
Sponges use various materials to reinforce their mesohyl and in some cases to produce skeletons, and this forms the main basis for classifying sponges. Calcareous sponges produce spicules made of calcium carbonate. Demosponges reinforce the mesohyl with fibers of a special form of collagen called spongin, most also produce spicules of silica, and a few secrete massive external frameworks of calcium carbonate. Although glass sponges also produce spicules made of silica, their bodies mainly consist of syncytia that in some ways behave like many cells sharing a single external membrane, and in others like individual cells with multiple nuclei. Probably because of their variety of construction methods, demosponges constitute about 90% of all known species, including all freshwater ones, and have the widest range of habitats. Calcareous sponges are restricted to relatively shallow marine waters where production of calcium carbonate is easiest. The fragile glass sponges are restricted to polar regions and the ocean depths where predators are rare, and their feeding systems very efficiently harvest what little food is available. Fossils of all of these types have been found in rocks dated from 580 to 523 million years ago. In addition Archaeocyathids, whose fossils are common in rocks from 530 million years ago but not after 490 million years ago, are now regarded as a type of sponge.
It is generally thought that sponges' closest single-celled relatives are choanoflagellates, which strongly resemble the cells that sponges use to drive their water flow systems and capture most of their food. It is also generally agreed that sponges do not form a monophyletic group, in other words do not include all and only the descendants of a common ancestor, because it is thought that Eumetazoa (more complex animals) are descendants of a sub-group of sponges. However it is uncertain which group of sponges is closest to Eumetazoa, as both calcareous sponges and a sub-group of demosponges called Homoscleromorpha have been nominated by different researchers. In addition a study in 2008 suggested that the earliest animals may have been similar to modern comb jellies. Since comb jellies are considerably more complex than sponges, this would imply that sponges had mobile ancestors and greatly simplified their bodies as they adapted to a sessile filter feeding lifestyle. Chancelloriids, sessile, bag-like organisms whose fossils are found only in rocks from the Cambrian period, increase the uncertainty as it has been suggested that they were sponges but also that their external spines resemble the "chain mail" of the slug-like Halkieriids.
The few species of demosponge that have entirely soft fibrous skeletons with no hard elements have been used by humans over thousands of years for several purposes, including as padding and as cleaning tools. However by the 1950s these had been over-fished so heavily that the industry almost collapsed, and most sponge-like materials are now synthetic. Sponges and their microscopic endosymbionts are now being researched as possible sources of medicines for treating a wide range of diseases. Dolphins also apparently use sponges as tools while foraging.
The worm is aptly named; Both its common and Latin names refer to the two, chromatically-hued spiral structures that are most commonly what is seen of the worm by divers. In actuality, these multicolored spirals are merely the worm's highly-derived respiratory structures.
S. giganteus appears like most tube-building polychaetes. It has a tubular, segmented body lined with chaeta, small appendages that aids the worm with its mobility. As it does not move outside its tube, this worm does not have any specialized appendages for movement or swimming.
The worms's most distinct features are the two "crowns" that are shaped like Christmas-trees. These "crowns" are actually highly modified prostomial palps which are specialized mouth appendages of the worm. Each spiral is actually composed of feather-like tentacles called radioles, which are heavily ciliated which allows any prey that are trapped in them to be transported straight towards the worm's mouth. While they are primarily feeding structures, S. giganteus also uses its radioles for respiration. It is because of this that the structures are commonly called "gills".
One of the major differences between Christmas-tree worms and the closely-related sabellid fan worms is that the latter do not have any specialized body structures to plug the holes of their tubes with when they withdraw into them. S. giganteus, like the other members of its family possess a modified radiole, usually called the operculum, that it uses to secure its hole when withdrawn into its tube.
As an annelid, S. giganteus possesses a complete digestive system. It has a well-developed closed circulatory system. Like other annelids, these worms possess well-developed nervous systems with a central brain and many supporting ganglia, including pedal ganglia, which are unique to the Polychaeta. Like other polychaetes, S. giganteus excrete with fully-developed nephridia. When they reproduce, they simply shed their gametes straight into the water where the eggs (and spermatozoa) will become part of the zooplankton and can be carried by the currents.
This was the #1 photo by Flickr - Interesting on the date April 19th 2009.
Quite possibly my favourite photo from our trip to Belize, though maybe a little backstory to explain the context: after 17 glorious dives around Glover's Reef, we had to limit ourselves on our last day to exploring the lagoon as we were flying home the next day.
Only 2-4 feet deep, we found a whole ecosystem down there, with seahorses, urchins, jellyfish and lots of other amazing creatures - but somewhere along the way, we found a friend: this little fish just decided he liked Annette (or possibly her colourful bikini stripes), and adopted her. He swam all around her when she was standing still, and followed along no matter where we went, usually swimming furiously just in front of her mask like in this photo. It was the cutest thing imaginable and we spent an hour giggling and taking photos of it.
Over the course of our exploration, it travelled hundreds of meters from where we found it and we felt just terrible when we eventually had to get out of the water - it just wouldn't leave her side. We can only hope that it found its way home. This had to be the most adorable fish behaviour we had ever seen.
When we told the divemasters on the island, they at first thought it was a Schoolmaster, since they are completely lost when not together in groups and will 'adopt' and try to 'school' with any creature which will allow it, but after seeing the photos they decided it wasn't a Schoolmaster after all. The closest we came to in the books was a juvenille black snapper, but even that has slightly different markings than this. If ANYONE can identify this little guy we would love to hear from you.
Thanks!