Beautiful Purple Hydrocoral
Purple hydrocoral (Stylaster californicus) looks like coral, but it is not a true coral (meaning it is not a reef building stony coral). Both belong to phylum Cnidaria, but true corals belong to class Anthozoa (sea anemones, corals, sea fans, and sea pens) and hydrocorals belong to class Hydrozoa (jellyfish, Portuguese man-of-war, and fire corals). Farnsworth Bank, a sea mount located off the backside of Catalina Island, is one of few places you can see colonies of purple hydrocorals in southern California.
Playing Underwater
Look at the mischievous expression on this California sea lion. This is from the last trip to the Southern Sea of Cortez and Cabo Pulmo. This young sea lion kept playing with my fins - hugging and nibbling on them. I can’t wait to go back there to play with these playful sea lions this fall.
Hear the Ocean Calling...
The ocean is calling to me. It’s time to go diving! I want to be underwater, quietly swimming with the fish.
Field of What?
Have you seen a field of pyrosomes while diving? We did on our dive at Catalina Island. Pyrosomes are colonial organisms, which means each one we see as one organism is actually made up of millions of smaller organisms. They are bioluminescent at night and in the day time have iridescent pink coloration. They float freely through the water column filtering microscopic plant cells out of the water to feed themselves.
These are Our Humans...
One more picture from our Christmas camping trip.
OSDT team: Alright, make funny face for this shot!
Dogs: what are our humans doing?
