Here is a nice little Island Kelpfish (Alloclinus holderi) from our trip on the Peace to Anacapa. In an interesting paper from a while ago (1992) a group from CSUN and CSLB mapped the species at Catalina. By numbers the top 5 are blue banded goby, reef finspot, spotted kelpfish, island kelpfish, and zebra goby. This is consistent with most of our observations I believe. By mass the order is different with the island kelpfish accounting for 41% of the biomass, the spotted kelpfish was next, and then the reef finspot. This is also consistent with our observations. Here the hoderi was shot at a very shallow depth of field to try to capture some of the nice bokeh that the Leica 45 macro lens can exhibit.

Garibaldis are everywhere and mostly we ignore them (except Cindy). Here is a nice little juvenile garibaldi with lots of spots.

We think this guy might be Aeolidiella olivae but are not sure. In any case here is a nice little nudibranch sitting on the dichroic glass stage.

We have been going through photos for this year's calendar. Here is a nice little flatworm sitting on the telescope felt stage that we shot with friends on the Giant Stride.

We were diving Sunday from our favorite boat, the Giant Stride with friends. I brought along the black dichroic stage and Dana brought me this nice little Flabellina trilineata.

We went diving last Sunday on the Giant Stride with friends. Conditions were awesome and there were lots of snails running around. Here is a nice little guy with a nice shell sitting on the dichroic glass filter.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Here is a nice little Hermissenda opalescence from a dive last Sunday with friends on the Giant Stride.  You can see where the dichroic stage reflects magenta and where it reflects green. Strange, but enjoy.

Here is a nice little (1/2 to 3/4 inch) sea star on a black dichroic stage. It reminded me that Christmas is coming.

On our recent trip to Seattle to dive in water even colder than here, we came across this little snail. Here he is sitting on the dichroic glass stage. Trippy reflection.

So it isn't widely known that scallops have up to 200 tiny eyes along the edge of the mantle lining their shells. As light enters into the scallop eye, it passes through the pupil, a lens, two retinas (distal and proximal), and then reaches a mirror made of crystals of guanine at the back of the eye. Just like modern telescopes. The light path is shown in the diagram in the lower left; above is a photo of a scallop from our recent dive adventure in Seattle.

We went to Seattle for a week of diving with our friends and had a great time. The main goal of the trip was to find some spiny lumpsuckers. Imagine our delight when we found this little guy wearing an actual Santa Hat (thanks Nannette). Enjoy and Merry Christmas.

Here is a nice little Armina californica (inappropriately named since this guy is from our Seattle Dive Trip). He is sitting on the dichroic glass stage. It turns out that the brain and neuronal organization of Armina is very similar to Tritonia even though they look very different, and this was studied a while ago (1974). The experiments seem complex and I don't think I have ever seen a Canon 1014 (bottom right): “Movements resulting from depolarizing single cells were monitored by a Fotonic Sensor KD 38 (M.T.I., New York), which detects small changes in the level of light reflected from the surface beneath the tip of the sensor. A more complete record of movements was obtained by photographing the sequence through the wall of the tank using a Canon 1014 Automatic camera loaded with Kodak K60 film in a Super 8 cassette. The results are based on 30 experimental animals which provided 254 records from individual neurons. All cells described were found on two or more occasions from different preparations.”