Black Cormorant

Tambja tenuilineata

These green nudibranchs, Tambja tenuilineata, are common at the Poor Knights Islands.  This one was at Meditation Wall.

A Trigger Fish in Chilly Water

The East Australian Current usually brings warm water south from the equator, along the east coast of Australia to Tasmania and even further south; but sometimes it diverts eastward to New Zealand. It carries hitchhikers from tropical waters along with it, and some of them end up at the Poor Knights Islands. I've never before seen trigger fish in other than tropical waters; but this one was at Northern Arch, more than 35 degrees from the equator, in 62 F water. The dive guides told us that they are not unusual. 

Kelp With Jellies

Kelp with Jellies at Splendid Arch in the Poor Knights.

Pregnant Pipefish on Kelp

This pipefish was quick even though pregnant.

City on a Kelp Blade

Life on a blade of macrocystis kelp at Naples. To me, a kelp leaf from close up looks like an aerial photograph of a city, with space divided up into various areas according to use and inhabitants. In this case, the lacy areas are bryozoans, while the spirals are nudibranch eggs. Some nudibranchs feed on bryozoans, so these may have laid eggs after snacking. The participants might see this as the remains of a Roman orgy, rather than a city.

In Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin wrote of kelp: "Almost all the leaves, excepting those that float on the surface, are so thickly incrusted with corallines as to be of a white colour."

Brown Gorgonian

Brown gorgonian at Underwater Island, Anacapa.

Red and Yellow Gorgonians

Red and yellow gorgonians. Gorgonians usually align their longer axes perpendicular to the current. Red and yellow often appear fairly close together, with one behind the other. Perhaps one strains from the water the food that the other has missed; or perhaps theyare just being neighborly!

Lightbulb Tunicate

These tunicates are about the size of pencil erasers.

Tiny Tunicates

These tunicates were about the size of grains of rice. In their free-swimming larval form, they have primitive nervous systems and brains, and thus count among our closest relatives on this planet. I assume these have lost their brains, because they are now sedentary: Llinas famously remarked that the transition from the free-swimming form resembles academics getting tenure.