Exploring Marine Ecosystems and Native Plants: Insights from Coral Reefs to Backyard Gardens
My six-year-old niece is coming to visit and we are going snorkeling! I'm very excited! Not only because she's a fun kid to hang out with, but also because she shares my love of fish and learning about the ocean. So, I've been thinking about all the things we could do together and how I might need to adapt them a bit for a tiny person.
I got my Padi Advanced Open Water certification over the weekend! Overall, it was a great experience! I feel more confident in the water and I finally have over 30 dives! I've been trying to hit that goal for a while now and it's exciting to finally be able to check that off the list ... now I just need to move to South Florida.... But the MOST exciting thing I want to share here is that we finally brought our underwater camera with us scuba diving.
This is an Initial Phase Queen Parrotfish being cleaned (most likely) by juvenile bluehead wrasse and are the best photos we've ever gotten of cleaner fish in action. I learned about this amazing occurrence from a fishinar presentation "Cleaning Stations" given by Ned Deloach (co-author of everyone's favorite fish ID books) that I really began to understand the importance of cleaning stations and the amazing relationships that play out there.
I didn’t know at the time what I was seeing or how hard it would be to get another great picture of this fish. I’ve seen them in Bonaire and Belize but never been able to get another picture good enough to share. I do know that the first time I saw it, I thought, “the reef is a truly astonishing and beautiful place!”
These fish are tricky to photograph but really fun to paint! To photograph them, you really have to wait for them to come to you. This was an early favorite fish of mine - the colors are so beautiful and the horns on its head are really fun to see!
Erica Lauer Vose 