Fish
- -Recently-
-
-
-
-
Category Archives: Conservation
Latest Posts
Soapfish, Greater Soapfish, Rypticus saponaceus
Hola Amigos, how was your Monday??? I came in yesterday and went straight to our deep-water labs and ended up being in there till 1:00 in the afternoon. My goal was to photograph the live slit-shells, hermits and assorted mollusks but I ended up draining all my photo tanks and cleaning them instead! We brought back a tiny deep-water scorpionfish from Bonaire as well that we found at 560 feet and he is doing real well, I love to watch him hunt the live mysis we toss in there. So a long story short, I never took any photos yesterday and it’s not looking like I will be getting to it today as well as we have two sub dives to start the day out. I have one of the strangest fish on the planet for you all today called a Greater Soapfish, Rypticus saponaceus. These fish crack me up!! On any given dive you find these odd looking fish laying around in the open acting like they are completely hung over! This one here was sprawled out high atop one of the pillars in Bonaire and never moved a muscle and NO he was not dead, I knew you were thinking that! The Soapfishes Body is elongated with a rounded dorsal fin. Their color is mottled, varying from drab reddish brown to gray, often with a green or blue cast. They also have pale spots, about the size of the pupil or smaller, on body and dorsal fin. The family Soapfish contains about 24 species of marine fishes constituting the tribe Grammistini (family Serranidae; order Perciformes), occurring from the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific region. In appearance, they are characterized by a reduced spinous dorsal fin and a slightly protruding lower jaw. The name soapfish refers to their ability, when agitated, to produce a toxic body mucus that forms a slimy, soapsudslike froth upon its secretion into the water. The toxic mucus serves as a deterrent to predators. All soapfishes are small, the largest attaining lengths of about 30 centimetres (1 foot). The greater soapfish (Rypticus saponaceus), the best known member of the group, is found in the Atlantic from the southern United States and northern South America to West Africa. The species is characterized by three distinct dorsal spines and is sometimes called the three-spined soapfish. I have to be under the sea in under an hour and have so much to do!!… More:
Posted in Conservation, Corals, Fish, Photography, Tanks, Uncategorized
Tagged america, Atlantic, bony fish, fish, greater, Live, marine, open, Photography, rypticus, united
Leave a comment
New eco-friendly shark barrier
‘Sharksafe’ is the name of the new eco-friendly shark barrier developed by a team of researchers at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. The Head of the Botany and Zoology Department, Prof. Conrad Matthee, says, “It is estimated that the numbers of certain shark species have decreased by up to 90% over the past 20 years – particularly the number of great white sharks”. He says that part of the problem is the existing shark nets which have been designed with the specific purpose to kill sharks. Not only do the current shark nets kill sharks, but they also unfortunately, result in the death of many other sea animals. According to the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board (KZNSB), their average annual catch of sharks in their nets is 591 and only 13.3% are released alive. Other sea animals included in this average annual catch are 201 rays, 60 turtles, 43 dolphins and 30 fish.… More:
Posted in Conservation, Science
Tagged dolphins, eco-friendly, rays, shark nets, shark species, south Africa, turtles, zoology department
Leave a comment
French Angelfish, Pomacanthus paru, Angelfishes
Good morning from a tiny island in the Caribbean called Curacao. While I was underwater shooting the submersible yesterday I was joined by a very curious French Angelfish who was pretty much begging to have his or her picture taken. I encounter these magnificent fish on just about every dive and it’s always the same circumstance. For instance, I will be shooting something else and these fish will swim directly in front of me and my camera as if to say “look at how beautiful I am, take my photo instead!” Then once they pass they always come back and usually do circles around me until I give them some attention. I remember once in Bonaire a dive master from Buddy Dive had two pet French Angelfish at a dive site on Klein Bonaire, the minute we jumped in they swam directly to him and waited by the boat until we returned. In this case he was feeding them fruit of some kind and they loved it, kind of strange considering their main diet is sponges. For you photographers, the slower and more quietly you dive the closer you will get to these fish, they tend to react differently to new or bad divers and usually will just swim away. I finally got into the deep-water labs yesterday and was able to photograph the beautiful assortment of slit-shells we currently have, will send that out to you tomorrow. I will be heading to Mexico in July to meet and work with the crew from the CATLIN project in Australia and help them photograph the reefs there, stay tuned for more. Well, we have two sub dives today, one will go to 1000 feet the other to around 550 so I need to get ready to submerge. Have a wonderful day, Barry MORE: French Angelfish, Pomacanthus paru, Angelfishes… More:
Posted in Conservation, Corals, Fish, Photography, Uncategorized
Tagged angelfish, circles, magnificent fish, pomacanthus paru, shells
Leave a comment
Deep Sea Crab, Deep Water Crabs, Spider Crabs
Good morning all, here’s a new crab they found yesterday at 767 feet buried in the sand out in front of the Substation. Talk about a face only a mother could love??!! He is currently doing very well in my giant cold-water aquarium equipped with all the comforts of home including deep sand, rocks and caves and things to crawl on. This lucky crab is being returned to were we found him sometime next week because we have no reason to keep him, we just wanted to take his picture. I will contact my friends at the Smithsonian today and get you his or her name and update the post immediately, it’s really a super cool creature! I am off to go take some photos of horses believe it or not, will be nice to be away from the H2O for a bit!! Talk more later, Barry MORE: Deep Sea Crab, Deep Water Crabs, Spider Crabs… More:
Posted in Conservation, Corals, Fish, Photography, Uncategorized
Tagged comforts of home, deep-water, smithsonian, spider crabs, water aquarium
Leave a comment
Divers asked to ‘replant’ Florida’s reefs
Volunteer divers can now learn how to help restore the ecosystem by cleaning and preparing new coral for planting in the Florida Keys.… More:
Posted in Conservation, Corals
Tagged caribbean reefs, commercial fishing, endangered species act, NOAA, rain forest
Leave a comment
Endangered Staghorn Coral, Acropora cervicornis
Good morning from Curacao. Did you all have a nice and relaxing weekend?? My Caribbean weekend flew by so fast and I honestly can’t believe it’s Monday already?? Saturday morning I grabbed the dogs and took off to the North coast for a super fun three hour walk along the coast. The dogs love this area because of all the small remote beaches to play on and for me I love all the newly deposited driftwood and the great beach-combing. I had two very dirty, very tired dogs by the time I got home and after shower time they both went to bed for the rest of the day, you gotta love tired dogs!! I then went shopping and stopped by my private sea-glass beach and collected glass shards for an hour, it was turning out to be a great day!! At 4:30 I left the house on my mountain bike for a super fast two hour ride and came home about as dirty as a biker can get due to our dry conditions and riding next to the waters edge. Yesterday, we started the day out with a two hour walk and did a bunch of trail cleaning, then I went into work for the rest of the day. Here’s my buddy Cival diving above a beautiful colony of critically endangered Staghorn coral that we found near the airport pier in Bonaire. You want to talk about a coral that is hard to find and is disappearing right before our eyes, here it is!! I was shocked when we found these and couldn’t believe we had found so many nice colonies all in one area, talk about a major treat!! These corals are becoming so rare that here in Curacao we hardly see them much any more, they are only found in a few locations. Staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) is a branching, stony coral with cylindrical branches ranging from a few centimetres to over two metres in length and height. It occurs in back reef and fore reef environments from 0 to 30 m (0 to 98 ft) depth. The upper limit is defined by wave forces, and the lower limit is controlled by suspended sediments and light availability. Fore reef zones at intermediate depths 5–25 m (16–82 ft) were formerly dominated by extensive single-species stands of staghorn coral until the mid-1980s. This coral exhibits the fastest growth of all known western Atlantic fringe corals, with branches increasing in length by 10–20 cm (3.9–7.9 in) per year.… More:
Posted in Conservation, Corals, Fish, Photography, Uncategorized
Tagged caribbean weekend, driftwood, sea glass, shower time, waters edge
Leave a comment
Deep Water Spiny Crab, Deep Sea Creatures
Here’s a mega cool spiny crab we found yesterday attached to a cool glass sponge at almost 1000 feet with the “Curasub”!!!! When this guy was first spotted the pilot thought it was just a large arrow crab which we see quite a few of but when they moved in closer found out it was indeed some kind of new crab. I will have to get this identified and then update the site unless some of you experts out there can help me out. We also found some more beautiful slit-shells and other mollusks that were brought up alive and are now in the labs eating away. We had also found a few cool shrimps but the crab you see here ate one of them and our deep water shark ate the others, will have to get more. People always ask me what is is like down there at 1000 feet??? Well, there sure isn’t any light or at least very little, we have to use our powerful lights on the sub just to navigate the area. We like to call the 1000 foot area “the liquid moon” it’s just scattered rocks and all silt with creatures hiding everywhere in the darkness. Popping out from the silt are large pink and orange anemones and beautiful red gorgonians that have all kinds of weird creatures and fish hiding around them. We see weird looking urchins and sea-stars on almost every dive and these super cool looking sea-cucumbers that if you watch closely will have a pearlfish swimming in and out of it’s anus, talk about cool! We are also now collecting every bottle we find as they are filled with tiny shells which seem to be driving some shell collectors crazy. The other reason for bringing up the bottles is they are a death trap for crabs, once they enter they can not get out. Many of the bottles we find date back to the mid 1700′s through the late 1800′s, I have turned into a bottle freak! My wife Aimee is in the June issue of Sport Diver with a photo of mine from our Sea Aquarium house reef which is also named Shipwreck Point. I also have photos in the Netherlands VOUGE this month of a topless Supermodel free diving with dolphins and we have deep-water scorpionfish featured in the Netherlands National Geographic so keep your eyes out for those.… More:
Posted in Conservation, Corals, Fish, Photography, Uncategorized
Tagged cool 21, liquid moon, shell collectors, sport diver, weird creatures
Leave a comment
Marines target snakeheads
Registration is now open for Marine Corps Base Quantico’s first snakehead fishing tournament, which will consist of 24 hours of competitive fishing, by hook and by bow, in all waters on and around the base that are open to the public.… More:
Posted in Conservation, Fish
Tagged bow fishing, environmental law enforcement, quantico creek, russell road, snakehead
Leave a comment
Grooved Brain Coral, Giant Colony of Brain Coral
Good morning friends, here is a very threatened coral called Grooved Brain Coral, Diploria labyrinthiformis that we found at the little pier directly behind the airport in Bonaire. From my own observations as a diver and underwater photographer this specific coral has really taken a beating over the past few years and is becoming harder and harder to find. A few years ago Curacao, Bonaire and the whole Caribbean went through one of the worst seasons of coral bleaching ever and many of these coral colonies did not recover! Like many divers I am still haunted by what the reef was transformed into during this long period of warm Caribbean water which laid waste to so many hard and soft corals. Our reefs here in Curacao are now filled with mound after mound of dead brain corals that never made it through the last bleaching and are a constant reminder of global warming. So now when I find these beautiful colonies of brain corals on any reef I always stop and take a photo, if conditions don’t get better these will disappear and photos will be all that is left. Brain coral includes several varieties of coral that are generally round or oval in shape with grooved or smooth ridges meandering across their surface so that they look much like a brain. Brain corals grow in shallow, warm water in all of the world’s oceans. While brain corals look like colorful ocean-floor plants, they are actually animals. Colonies of polyps secreting a hard skeleton of calcium carbonate create the brain coral, which can live for hundreds of years. Colonies grow to as much as six feet in height. The name applies to corals in the Faviidae family, which are part of the Cnidaria phylum known as “sea flowers.” The appearance of brain coral ridges ranges from flattened to folded to figure-eight shaped. Brain corals live for hundreds of years with reports of some approaching 900 years in age or more. Their skeletons hold a wealth of information for scientists to study. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts has used cross sections of ancient brain coral to reconstruct 500 years of Atlantic Ocean climate data. Like most corals, brain corals gain nutrition from small marine animals and invertebrates that float by as well as from an algae that grows on the coral. Polyps in the brain coral colonies stretch out from the mound to collect the food floating past them.… More:
Posted in Conservation, Corals, Fish, Invertebrates, Photography, Uncategorized
Tagged airport, caribbean, contaminated, corals, fish, food, polyps, woods, world
Leave a comment
Diver Looking at Sponges Under the Salt Pier in Bonaire
Hi friends, sorry about the late start again, there’s just too much to do around here today. Our sub just took off on an all day voyage down to 1000 feet in search of anything new and unusual and will be gone for about 5-6 hours!! My job while they are gone is to help get the deep-water labs ready in case something is brought up alive and then get the cameras ready to photograph it all. Above is one of the many cool scenes from under the World famous Salt Pier in Bonaire, talk about a great place to dive!! My friend Cival and I did two dives here while the scientists were far away in the darkness collecting and searching for new species. The pillars at the Salt Pier are covered in sponges and corals and are home to thousands of fish and creatures, it’s one of those “must dive” spots that should not be missed. We swam around to all the pillars and in the end found that the ones on the ends are the hands down best, they have the best sponges and the most fish most likely because ships always dock right in the middle. MORE: Diver Looking at Sponges Under the Salt Pier in Bonaire… More:
Posted in Conservation, Corals, Fish, Photography, Uncategorized
Tagged conservation, corals, fish, older-post, Photography, pillars, recreation, sponges-under, sports, substation, under-the-world
Leave a comment
Substation Curacao, Mini Submersible in Bonaire
Hi friends, it’s been crazy around here since we got back especially with trying to get all my photos sent out to all the press and scientists, 100gb of photos takes a long time to process!! So I will quickly explain the four photos you see here. The first one is our new research vessel called “the Chapman” with our new two million dollar submersible on the back parked at the Town Pier in Bonaire. The second photo is a close up of our submersible called the “Curasub” on the back deck of the Chapman, the orange tube on the side is filled with rechargeable batteries. The third photo shows how we lift and park the sub by setting it into our custom made floating dock which travels on the deck of the Chapman. The last photo shows two of our deep water sponge scientists from Holland with their finds, this was taken in front of the World famous “Salt Pier”. Our mission for the Chapman and the sub is to be able to deliver scientists and researchers alike to a chosen destination (in style) and send them off to the depths (up to 1000 feet) and let them go crazy searching for stuff. In the two years we have had the sub we have done about 900 dives, mostly all in and around Curacao. We get scientists in the sub that only want to collect shells while others that only want to collect algae, this little baby is equipped to do it all. On the front of the sub is a large basket to hold specimens, a killer robotic arm with a kung-fu grip and a fish holding tank and vacuum, there’s really not much we can’t collect. Our normal rate is around $17,000 a day to rent the ship and sub, this includes the whole nine yards including food and lodging. Our sub can stay down for about 8 hours usually longer than most scientists can hold their bladders and everyone always returns with a smile. If your wanting to do a tour here in Curacao at Substation, www.substation-curacao.com that will run you $650 for a one and a half hour trip down to depths of 450-1000 feet, you can choose. Please feel free to contact me or the Substation for any questions at all. I am on my way over to our deep-water aquariums to photograph some of the insane slit-shells we found in Bonaire and brought back alive, the colors are just mind blowing!!… More:
Posted in Conservation, Corals, Fish, Photography, Uncategorized
Tagged barry, bonaire, chapman, conservation, curasub, Photography, photos, submersible, world
Leave a comment
Curasub, Substation Curacao, Deep Sea Creatures
Hi friends, we are back!!! I honestly don’t even know where to start so I think I will just give it to you in a nutshell and go into more details as the week progresses. So let’s see, a week ago we loaded up the sub onto our ship called the “Chapman” and first took off for two days to the tiny island of Klein Curacao. On board we had the top scientists from the Smithsonian and sponge experts from Holland, all in search of something different. We did two long sub dives on Klein and found all kinds of cool stuff which I will eventually get sent out to you to see. We then returned to Curacao for just one day and then took off for Bonaire for five days with the same scientists still aboard. It took us around six hours on rough seas to get to Bonaire, funny because it only takes fifteen minutes in a plane?? Our ship travels at around 8 knots an hour which is pretty slow but with that said it’s a big ship and it’s carrying 25 people and a 6 ton submersible!! In Bonaire we traveled around to different docks, like the Town Pier, Airport Pier, and the famous Salt Pier and once docked we unloaded the sub and took off into the darkness. While the sub was gone I spent my time setting up aquariums on-board and once the sub returned raced around like a crazy man shooting all the cool new specimens that were brought up alive. The above photo is just one of the many cool things the scientists found. What your looking at is a deep water gorgonian of some kind with a spectacular, tiny starfish attached to it found at around 530 feet. I also had the pleasure of getting to photograph new fish never seen before including three really cool deep-water scorpionfish, I will send you those soon to check out. They also brought up bottles from the 1800′s filled with shells, rare slit-shells, crazy looking sponges, tube worms, long spined urchins, sea biscuits, shrimps, and on and on. One of the coolest finds was a jug from the 15th-16th century but because of Bonaire law we were unable to touch it but did get some cool photos. We left Bonaire yesterday at 9:00am and got back to Curacao at around 3:00, it was great to be back on non-moving land once again.… More:
Posted in Conservation, Corals, Fish, Funny, Photography, Uncategorized
Tagged sea biscuits, setting up aquariums, shrimps, sponges, tiny island
Leave a comment
Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr
Reefs® Community System