~Along the Reef~

A blog devoted to life along the reef, tropical and temperate! I mostly post photographs, but occasionally post reef art too. I take credit for none of these pictures unless otherwise noted. Feel free to submit or request anytime! -Christina >>personal

[trynottodrown]

Cyber Monday Sale 

These designs and many more!

Starting at 12 am Eastern Monday Nov. 30th

Use code: Cyber15 

[alongthereef]

Those nudis tho <3

[silver-spider-art]

I’ve been experimenting doing freehand tooling illustrations on leather. This is my third wallet, I think its going pretty good. I love drawing octopus tentacles way too much. They’re just so fun.

[classyhustleronline-deactivated]

Beautiful Shell

[realmonstrosities]

Bobtail Squid (Sepiolidae) are a family of cutesy, wutesy cephalopods found mostly in the tropics.

They’re not proper squid at all,.being more closely related to cuttlefish, and that might be why they’re so short and squat they’re also known as Dumpling Squid.

These are some of the smallest cephalopods, reaching some 1 to 8 cm long depending on species.

Most of them spend a lot of time on the seabed, since they’re not proficient swimmers. They spend the day buried in sand, even secreting a kind of glue to ensure a good disguise.

At night they go on the hunt, swimming about by flapping their wings and snatching up small crustaceans and the like.

A lot of Bobtail Squid have a light organ on their underside which is packed full of luminescent bacteria. The light organ can be opened and closed to emit just enough light to mask the Bobtail’s silhouette from the eyes of predators as it swims by the light of the moon.

This is just the same tactic used by many deep sea creatures and, in fact, there are some intrepid Bobtail Squid who live in the deep sea and some pelagic ones who never touch the sea floor at all.

…Images: Richard E. Young/Chris Frazee and Margaret McFall-Ngai/Mark Norman/Patrick Randall

[karinvanzon-deactivated20200721]

Cephalopod speedpaint.. 15ish minutes I think, which is insanely fast for me!

[socialfoto]

Octopus - Papua New Guinea Octopus - Papua New Guinea by markandcarla

[packtsardines]

[lifeunderthewaves]

Anemone Fish by Andrea-Hufen I love this fish

[magic-of-eternity]

[alongthereef]

The image on the left belongs to my friend Nate Bernardo. It was taken at the California Academy of Sciences (their huge Philippine reef tank) Someone removed the watermark >:(

[lifeunderthewaves]

Clownfish | Nusa Lembongan | Indonesia by xavierhoenner There were lots of clown fish when I did that first dive in Nusa Lembongan, trying to find a substitute for not seeing any manta rays. Getting a sharp picture of these guys proved to be a difficult exercise as they kept moving in and out of their anemones. One thing that didn’t help was the fact that there was no way to tell the camera where to focus. Anyhow, I’m quite pleased with this one ^_^

[lifeunderthewaves]

Red Sea by oksanavashchuk

[lifeunderthewaves]

Felimida neona by EduardoBastos Felimida neona

Arvoredo island in State of Santa Catarina, Brazil

http://ift.tt/1wfbli7

[lifeunderthewaves]

One day I’ll fly away by diverstef Green Turltle - Chelonia mydas

Koh Similan, Thailand

[missmarinebio]

Two faced frogfish! Actually, it is only an effect of my strobe, but still very cool looking. The frogfish is a type of anglerfish which usually just uses its fins more like arms to walk slowly along the sea floor. This one is extra grumpy, it kind of makes it cute!

[typhlonectes]

Anatomy of an adult female chambered nautilus

… the best known species of nautilus, a “living fossil” related to the octopuses. The animal has a primitive brain that forms a ring around its oesophagus, has four gills (all other cephalopods have only two), and can only move shell-first (seemingly “backwards”) by pumping water out through its funnel. The shell and tentacles are shown here as shadows. 

Diagram: K.D. Schroeder

(via: Wikipedia)

[forest-faerie-spirit]

{Seal In A Kelp Forest} by {Kyle McBurnie}

[commonly-nonsensical]

while I’m here:

aspartame does not give you cancer

gluten is not bad for you if you’re not allergic/don’t have celiac disease

superfoods aren’t real, they’re just healthy things with maybe some nicer levels of certain vitamins

vaccines do not cause autism or really anything else and the chemicals present in them that typically scare you are in such minute amounts that they do precisely fuck-all in your body (we’re talking scales of one part per million)

you cannot do a cleanse or diet to “rid your body of toxins,” your kidneys and liver have that covered

GMO foods will not kill you; most genetic crop modification just makes our crops hardier and produce more food (and genetic modification doesn’t inject more chemicals into your food, it’s just minor altering of DNA that is made of the exact same stuff your DNA is made from)

if you feed your cat a vegan diet I will personally come to your home with the skull of a long-dead predator, point out the shape of its jaw and teeth as indicators of predatory feeding habits, and then beat you with it

[k-airosclerosis-deactivated2017]

I love this