July 6, 2014

Since internet has been iffy I am playing catch up again with the posts.  

          Did not push too hard today.  Only a morning swim (3 hrs) and a laid back afternoon, catching up on blogging and consolidating info, even a little easy reading.   Aaahhh!  Checked out the area in front of the dock, west about 100m or so.  There was quite a bit of rubble before reaching the actual reef area.  The rubble area had rock, some hard corals, such as boulder and brain corals.  Heading towards the northern side (to the right) the reef started to come alive with a lot of different soft corals, some sponges, anenomes, urchins and brilliantly colored fish.  There was an abundance of feather and branch corals compared to fans.  Many FT were found on the feather and branch corals, a couple on rod corals and even some in the sediment between fans.  The FT tended to congregate in a fairly tight area near the center of the reef which is in a pretty open area getting a fairly strong current.  Marked as many as possible with flags before lunch.  Worked with the GPS unit getting used to it to mark the FTs throughout the bay.

                                     BRANCHING FIRE CORAL - OVERTAKING SEA FAN                                         

                                          SPLIT-CROWN FEATHER DUSTER

                                          CHRISTMAS TREE WORMS ON BRAIN CORAL

                                          CHRISTMAS TREE WORMS - CLOSEUP