21:20 Had an amazingly entertaining fish
lecture with guest lecturer J.B. Heiser, who was an absolute honour to speak to
and work with, which was a talk that matched up to his great, yet eye-opening,
speech on the Tsunami risk in this area due to the plates. To start his lecture he wore an elaborate
fish shirt, a fish nose and a cap that had a fish through it – and this is the
guy who reclassified the taxonomy for the whole of the Grouper fish family that
is now seen in modern books, what a legend.
It was great to hear a different take on the classic Fish Lecture from
the guy that originally helped create the species list for this park (A list
that I would be adding to in the near future!).
I next took a group tidepooling where it
was actually fairly disappointing for once, very hot and I found nothing when
two rocks were chosen to be flipped over.
However I did see a crab with a white downwards pointing arrow on its
back that looked like someone took out some correction fluid (Tippex/Whiteout)
on the poor guy, alas I cannot find a good crab book about for this area and
only one of the 5 or 10 crabs I’ve seen was in the book. Another unidentifiable species that won’t be
going on my species list.
The snorkelling was very different, J.B.
gave an in-water talk on coral biology where I learned that pufferfish and
boring clams (molluscs) were the cause of the scratches on the surface of the
Porites species of massive boulder coral found here, not Parrotfish as you would expect. I found a Clingfish right by the Sharks Tooth
rock and, as mentioned, J.B. confirmed saying he has never seen anything like
it and, although tiny, this little guy provided something new to the both of
us. I took this unique opportunity with
J.B. to get a handful of more decent photos too.
.JPG) |
| Clingfish By Sharktooth, Strange (D.Philpot) |
.JPG) |
| Pelican On Sharktooth Rock (D.Philpot) |
It’s been great to hang out with this
guy, such an inspirational character… and how I would like to be in the future,
especially in terms of his experiences and stories he so kindly shared.
This evening I also got a VERY close-up video of an Armadillo which can be seen here.
This evening I also got a VERY close-up video of an Armadillo which can be seen here.