Exploring Marine Ecosystems and Native Plants: Insights from Coral Reefs to Backyard Gardens
No fish coloring book could be complete without a substantial section on the Wrasse family. These fish are common, plentiful, often brightly colored, and ecologically significant - an all around win for snorkeling and coloring! I've included the most common wrasses - Yellow and Blue headed Wrasses and Hogshead Wrasse - as well as the rarer but fantastically colored Puddingwife wrasse.
This next installation of my fish coloring book is about Goatfishes. I think we are pretty likely to see some Yellow Goatfish on our snorkeling trip, but it might be hard to see a spotted goatfish while snorkeling. This is mainly because yellow goatfish will swim around in groups while Spotted Goatfish tend to just hang out on the bottom. I've included these fish mainly because I think the way these fish find food is really remarkable. I have included a short recording of a Spotted Goatfish using its barbels to search for food over the sand to give you an idea of what I mean.
Boxfish have a very special place in my heart - physiologically, they are some of the most fascinating fish I've seen. No matter how many times I see a Boxfish, I always get excited and stop to watch them noodle by. If you've ever seen one head-on, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
I'm so excited that I was able to schedule a morning classroom session with the Coral Restoration Foundation for all of us. Since we're going to be learning a whole lot about coral from the perspective of coral restoration, I though a page about Staghorn coral - one of the most common coral species to be outplanted in coral restoration programs - would be appropriate.
As I mentioned in my last post about Stony Corals, I want to be able to identify coral by their groupings in order to make it easier to remember it's specific features and look it up later on. This section is all about octocorals (aka Gorgonians).
Erica Lauer Vose 