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Dread
Posts: 85
Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2007 7:48 am

New to the Forum

Post by Dread »

First I'd like to thank Rik and Dave for their helpful welcomes to the forum. I've been enjoying this site for a couple months now, the work presented here is fantastic! Right now I'm using an Olympus c8080, but upgrading to an SLR system soon.

About me: I'm a grad student (studying marine picoplankton), PADI scuba instructor, ball python breeder, and very recently a photographer. I believe my biggest envy is seeing all of you with nice microscopes that you enjoy using Even at 1000X, what I work on day in and day out is still pretty boring!

Here's an intro of some of the stuff I do enjoy working with:

Image

Image

Image

That's my limit... more to come unless you protest.

Ryan

JoanYoung
Posts: 583
Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2007 4:20 am
Location: South Africa

Post by JoanYoung »

Welcome Ryan :) These are brilliant pics!!
Joan Young

Ken Ramos
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Joined: Thu Jul 27, 2006 2:12 pm
Location: lat=35.4005&lon=-81.9841

Post by Ken Ramos »

Beautiful images Ryan, I would have to say that working with things such as these would indeed be interesting. :D

rjlittlefield
Site Admin
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Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
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Re: New to the Forum

Post by rjlittlefield »

Dread wrote:That's my limit... more to come unless you protest.
Send more tomorrow, please. :D

And tell us about the subjects, too. I gather we have here a snake (one of your pythons?), and a nudibranch (what kind?), and ...mmm...nope, I'm not gonna go out on a limb with that last one. :lol:

--Rik

tpe
Posts: 478
Joined: Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:07 am
Location: Copenhagen Denmark

Post by tpe »

Welcome from another newbie, fantastic pictures too. I look forward to the next lot with baited breath. Yes the amount of help that people are willing to give here is wonderfull, i have had so much help here too, and all of it excelent.

tim

Dread
Posts: 85
Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2007 7:48 am

Post by Dread »

A very educated audience here to be guessing nudibranchs! That is a Flabellina verrucosa, one of our most common aeolid nudibranchs on this coast. Their feathery branches change colour depending on what they've been eating (seasonally). There he's cruising around on a sea peach (Halocynthia pyriformis), and in the left corner you can see a larval crustacean attached the the surface as well. Sea peaches are tunicates (chordates) and are thus one of our closest relatives in the sea:
Image


Here's a trio of F. verrucosa from earlier in the year feeding on some bryozoans attached to the Agarum cribrosum kelp:
Image

The red reptile is the aptly named "Rainbow Boa", and that one is of the Brazilian variety. Brighter reds, and even worse temper! I have a Venezuelan at home, and she's a doll... you'd never think they were the same species.

The blue spiky things are "slime worms" which is a terrible name given the beauty that shows up when you see all their detail. They are very light and pressure sensitive, so any movement around them (or flash) and they disappear into their crevices and won't be back any time soon, you only get one shot!

Here's a small-polyped soft coral (Gersemia rubiformis) that you'll find on walls in areas of high water movement:
Image

More to come another day :) For the sake of bandwidth-challenged members, I'll start a new thread.

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

More lovely stuff, Ryan! The subjects are beautiful, and the photos show them off to full advantage.

I'm vaguely familiar with nudibranchs because of peering into tidepools on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. Once you see one, they're not easy to forget!

But I am not a diver, and I've not run into "slime worms" before. They are lovely! Are these a more colorful variety of "fan worm", similar to the Myxicola infundibulum shown here? I was interested to read that Myxicola has been involved in much research on nerves and permeable membranes in general -- something about a giant axon that enables very rapid contraction. Google search on myxicola axon produces tons of hits. Or have I wandered completely off base here?

BTW, which coast are you on?

--Rik

Dread
Posts: 85
Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2007 7:48 am

Post by Dread »

I went to check in my field guide the real name of these worms and all I could dig up was my British Columbia Seafood Cookbook! But I do believe you're right, that these are Myxicola infundibulum (the slime dweller). What I shoot is usually no deeper than 20m (it's dark and cold past there), so the colours in these worms might be more brilliant than those from deep sea mud grabs.

I never got to Washington State when I was living in BC, but I could see Port Angeles and Mt. Rainier nearly everyday. I miss the west coast, but the east coast is my home. I'm lucky in a way, as the diving industry is still in its infancy here, so there aren't a lot of people here taking better pictures of the things I like to photograph! It's a comfortable niche :) I would like to have more diversity in nudibranchs though! I really got hooked diving in BC, I was one of the few 16 year olds who could tell at a glance the difference between Anisodoris nobilis and Archidoris montereyensis (the two sea lemons). My first taste of science involved these guys:
http://www.racerocks.com/racerock/resea ... eeryan.htm

The racerocks.com site as a whole is a great resource, and I'm not just saying that as a vested interest. For anyone interested in killing several hours looking at some of the most beautiful nudibranchs on the planet though, I would suggest:
www.seaslugforum.net

I've probably only seen 20 species so far, and photographed even fewer. But I'll add to that list in time :)

JoanYoung
Posts: 583
Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2007 4:20 am
Location: South Africa

Post by JoanYoung »

More fantastic pictures here Ryan of extremely interesting subjects. Thanks for sharing. :)
Joan Young

jmlphoto
Posts: 269
Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2007 11:09 am

Post by jmlphoto »

welcome great photos, i like the F. verrucosa
Jordan L. photo southern california.

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