Well we only got in one more dive due to windy weather. These are from a night shore dive off Turtle Point. It’s cool cause you can see what some of the corals look like when their polyps are open and feeding nocturnally.
This is a Basket Star, a large brittle starfish:
Below’s a Lobophylia (I think), and classifies as an LPS (Large Polyped Stony) coral. At night the big round polyps are somewhat deflated/shruken, and the rows of short tentacles are filter feeding for tiny plankton.
Below a Gorgonian that feeds almost exclusively on plankton, as opposed the more common hermatypic corals than live mostly on energy from their symbiotic photosynthetic zooxanthellae algae.
Here’s what the little knobby stony corals look like at night with the polyps open for feeding. During the day their zooxanthelae feed them.
Chris, your shots are awesome – both the day and the night dives. The colors really came out well, looks like great visibily too – how fun!
Awesome pictures. I am wondering how big the star fish is, it looks very large in the picture, can you reference something to compare it to please? Enjoy your trip.
Chris, Thank you for sharing your beautiful photos and your knowledge of the undersea world. What a great vacation!
The basket was about one foot across with the camera about 2 to 3 feet away. The lobo colony is about 16 inches across with the polyps about 2-3 inches each. The small open polyps from the colonies in the last 2 photos are about the diameter of a dime or penny each.